


Hallmark Christmas Movie

by earlgreytea68



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Christmas, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:33:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 55,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27464977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: In which Pete doesn't believe in Christmas Magic, and kinda neither does Patrick, but they manage to find it together.
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Comments: 599
Kudos: 205





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It feels like Christmas came early this year, doesn't it???????

_Last Christmas_

On December 24, Pete Wentz was the last one to leave the office.

He walked through the detritus of ribbons and bows, of fake snow and blinking lights. He kicked aside grinning Santas and cheerful snowmen. He called the elevator and waited for it to arrive. He stepped onto it and pushed the button for the lobby. On the ground floor, the security guard said, “Merry Christmas, Mr. Wentz!” and Pete called back heartily, “You, too! I hope that little girl of yours gets everything she wants from Santa!” The security guard called back something that might have been _thank you_ or something along those lines, but Pete was already out the door.

The world outside was frozen with cold, bright with Christmas. There was laughter spilling out of every car that passed, every building whose door swung open. Pete walked down the sidewalk, dodging lumps of gray ice from the snowfall the week before, and tried to choose the quietest side streets he could to duck down, the ones with the least amount of colored lights in the windows.

And, at the end of one of them, he passed a bar, out of which people happened to step just as he walked by, a couple, laughing with each other, a man’s hand possessively on the small of a woman’s back, and Pete had to stop abruptly to avoid running into them, and through the open door drifted the sound of someone singing Wham!’s _Last Christmas_.

Pete found himself standing by the door of the bar, watching the man and the woman hail a taxi, slide their way in. And then he turned and went into the bar. He stepped through the velvet curtains blocking the cold from blustering in and blinked around the place. It was occupied by a few scattered parties of festive bargoers, merry with the approaching holiday, and it was lit mostly by Christmas lights strung along the ceiling and wrapped around the bottles behind the bar, and in the corner a man was playing the piano, singing along. _Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day you gave it away_. He had a voice that was clear as a bell, clearer than the frosty air Pete had left behind outside, clearer than the midnight upon which that glorious song of old came. Pete stood for a moment, transfixed, watching the piano player. His back was to Pete, so all Pete could see, really, was the fedora on his head, a sprig of holly tucked into it.

Pete slid into a far seat on the bar.

“What can I get you?” the bartender asked, sliding a napkin in front of him.

Pete was taking off his gloves, letting his fingers thaw out. He glanced at the bar, trying to ascertain what kind of place this was. A fancy cocktail kind of place. Probably all the drinks were going to be served with sprigs of sage and juniper or something.

He took a chance. “A hot toddy?”

“Coming up,” said the bartender.

On the piano, the singer morphed from _Last Christmas_ into _Baby, Please Come Home_. _They’re singing “Deck the Halls,” but it’s not like Christmas at all_. Pete watched him from the end of the bar, the way his hands danced over the keys, the way he belted the notes out. From this angle, Pete could see that he was wearing glasses, and that there were strands of strawberry-blonde hair escaping from his fedora. The Christmas lights blinked red and green and yellow over him. 

The next song was _Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas_. Pete said to the bartender, as she slid him his hot toddy, “Does he play any upbeat Christmas songs?”

The bartender snorted. “Tell me about it.”

Pete smiled and wrapped his hands around the hot toddy and listened to that voice sing. _Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow_.

His phone buzzed in the pocket of his coat, and he sighed and took it out. His mother. _Where are you????_

He sighed and put his phone back in his pocket and took a sip of his hot toddy. The bartender was leaning against the bar next to him, surveying the room to make sure no one needed a drink refill. He asked her, “How long do you think I can put off tonight’s family obligations?”

“Ha!” she grinned. “Should have picked up a Christmas Eve shift.”

“Yeah, I tried,” Pete said with a grimace. He really should have just stayed in the office, played a few more rounds of Spider Solitaire in the dark quiet, but he’d felt himself crumpling. Sometimes – a lot of the times – the last thing Pete needed was dark quiet, which was how he’d found himself slipping into this glowy bar with the angel-voiced piano player in the first place.

Pete kept sipping his hot toddy. The piano player kept serenading them. The phone kept buzzing.

_You were supposed to be here hours ago!_

_Your father has important people who want to congratulate the new CEO on a record-setting season!_

_The plane has been standing by for hours!_

_For someone who cares about the environment so much, you certainly let our private plane burn a lot of fuel waiting for you!_

“Jesus Christ,” Pete muttered under his breath. Someday he was just going to slip off and disappear somewhere, he really was. A tropical island with Mai Tais and surfboards. He put his phone away and finished his hot toddy.

Over on the piano, the piano player started Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s _The Power of Love_.

Pete had to quirk a smile at that one. “Nice,” he murmured, and fished out his wallet. Fuck, he never had cash on him when he needed it for extravagant gestures. He waved the bartender over from where she was stacking glasses left behind from one of the last lingering guests and handed her his credit card, and then, when she came back with his bill, he tipped $2,000. “Split it with that super cheerful piano player,” he said to the bartender, tapping the amount. “Tell him I appreciate his taste in Christmas music.”

“Hang on,” said the bartender, blinking at the check. “Are you for real?”

“Unfortunately, yes, very real,” Pete said, as he stood up and pulled his coat back on. “Merry Christmas.”


	2. Chapter 2

_This Christmas_

“This is getting to be a problem,” Bebe says to him.

“What now?” Pete asks. His life is nothing but problems.

“You, taking no interest the company you’re theoretically the head of.” Bebe folds her arms and looks unimpressed at him.

“I’m taking an interest,” Pete protests, holding up the pile of contracts he’s supposed to be reviewing. “Trust me, I take an interest.”

“You haven’t approved the Christmas marketing plan, and we are _late_ to be getting a Christmas marketing plan into place.”

“It’s July.”

“Exactly.”

Pete swears under his breath. This job is going to be the death of him. Which is almost the point. It wasn’t like Peter Wentzes ever had lives beyond this job.

Pete puts aside the million other things he’s supposed to be doing so he can look Bebe directly in the eyes. “Bebe. Please believe me. I promise you: I don’t care about the Christmas marketing plan. You’re the marketing director, you should do whatever you see fit.”

Bebe’s jaw drops. It’s like Pete said he hates puppies. Or doesn’t believe in Santa Claus. “You don’t _care_?” she shrieks at him.

Pete winces. “Shh, there’s no need to be so—”

“No. I’m sorry.” Bebe lifts a hand up like a conversational traffic cop. “I’m trying to process this. You don’t care about the Christmas marketing plan?”

“No.”

“You?”

“Me.”

“The chief executive officer.”

“Yes.”

“Of a company.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Called _Christmas Magic_.” Bebe puts meaningful emphasis on this.

Pete looks at her solemnly and presses a hand over his heart. “Swear to God, Bebe, I, Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III, the chief executive officer of Christmas Magic, Incorporated, could not care less about our Christmas marketing plan.”

Bebe stares at him for a second. “It’s, like, the only time of the year when we make any money.”

“We are a company that sells Christmas decorations,” Pete agrees gravely, “so yes, that’s the only time of year when we make any money.”

Bebe frowns. “We sell other things.”

“We sell, like, fourteen porcelain Easter eggs a year to my aunt Janice in Schenectady,” Pete says.

“Okay, fine, yes, the _point is_ you are the head of an entire corporate empire built around Christmas magic.”

“Do you hear the contradiction between the terms ‘corporate empire’ and ‘Christmas magic’?” Pete asks. “I mean, who the fuck named the company?”

“Your grandfather,” Bebe reminds him drily.

“Yeah, and I’ve always wondered if he meant it to be so goddamn cynical, the literal incorporation of Christmas magic. I never asked him because every time he saw me he just said, ‘Peter, can’t you wear your hair in some more respectable way?’ and then walked away from me to go play golf or whatever.”

Bebe says, “This is just blowing my mind.”

“That my grandfather wasn’t cuddly and boisterous?”

“No.”

“That somehow, despite my immense unsuitability for the position and utter lack of desire for it, I’m CEO of this company?”

“That you don’t like Christmas. You produce forty Christmas-themed movies a year.”

“No, I do not,” Pete corrects her. “This _company_ produces forty Christmas-themed movies a year. I, you know, try not to be forced to watch any of them.”

“You really don’t like Christmas,” Bebe repeats faintly.

“Do you need some water?” Pete asks sympathetically. “You’ve had a tremendous shock, I understand. It’s your first Christmas as marketing director here, there was really no way to prepare yourself for my complete indifference.”

“Is it, like, just the Christmas marketing that you hate? Or the entire Christmas season?”

“Why are you so caught up on this? I give you _carte blanche_ on the Christmas marketing, you’re good at your job, that’s why I hired you, so you can just go and do it. Isn’t that a good thing?”

“But I took this job because I love Christmas! Because what could be better than working for the company that _defines_ Christmas! And now I find out it’s all a hoax! You don’t even like Christmas!”

“It’s not – precisely – a hoax. Lots of people at this company love Christmas. I would hazard to say the majority of people at this company love Christmas. Just…not me.” Pete shrugs.

“So what do you do during the Christmas season? Do you just sit around here being Grinchy?”

“No,” Pete answers indignantly. “I am extremely supportive of everyone else’s Christmas fun. And I work, like, quadruple overtime during the busiest season we have so that everyone who loves Christmas can go spend it with their family. And then, on Christmas Eve, when everyone’s gone home and it’s finally over for a year – all the madness, the whole fucking consumerist tornado – then I sit in the dark and quiet and I think, Wow, lucky me, we get to do it all again next year. And then I usually try to find somewhere to drink heavily.”

“Huh,” says Bebe, looking stunned by everything that’s happening.

Pete can’t help but be amused. “Want to know what I did last year?”

“I don’t know. Did you tell a bunch of kids there’s no such thing as Santa? Did you steal wreaths off of people’s doors?”

“No. I told you: I let other people have their ‘Christmas magic,’ whatever that is. I left this building, and I found the quietest street I could to walk down, and at the end of it was this bar, and there was this piano player, this hot redhead with this once-in-a-lifetime voice, and he was playing all the most depressing Christmas songs of all time, this whole medley. And I sat at the end of the bar and drank a hot toddy and listened to this adorable guy sing these sad songs very beautifully, and honestly, it was, like, the best Christmas I’ve ever had.”

There’s a moment of silence, then Bebe says, “Listening to a redheaded piano player sing sad songs in a bar is the best Christmas you’ve ever had?”

Pete chuckles. “He was good. And he was cute. I take what I can get, you know? And then I couldn’t put it off any longer and had to fly to Vermont to pretend to be King of Christmas or whatever the fuck.”

“You should have taken the hot redhead piano player with you, I bet he would have perked up your Christmas.”

“Ha,” says Pete, “that’s a storyline for one of those forty movies I produce every year.”


	3. Chapter 3

When Pete says he doesn’t pay attention to the Christmas marketing, he _really, really_ doesn’t. Pete’s thing is and always has been networking, socializing, schmoozing. He can make the right connections with the right people. That’s what he brings to the table. He’s not a person who knows what brand of jingle bells draws in the most viewers, or whatever the fuck his company is about. Like, it’s not like Pete _asked_ to be born a Wentz and forever in thrall to Christmas.

So that means it’s November before Pete sees the ad. It’s _November_ , and the ad is _literally playing on his television network_.

Pete doesn’t make a habit of watching the Christmas Magic Network when he’s at home, like, really, he likes to never be subjected to the Christmas Magic Network. The only reason it’s on is because his mother is in town for some sort of charity thing and she’s staying at the penthouse and _she_ always has the Christmas Magic Network on twenty-four / seven because she has totally embraced the Wentz billions she married into. So his mother is watching the Christmas Magic Network and Pete is walking through the living room on his way to take a shower after working out and then he hears his name. His full name, like he’s getting in trouble for something. _Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III_.

Pete draws to a stop and looks over his shoulder. His mother is flipping through a magazine, not watching the commercial playing on the network. It’s his _face_. Literally his fucking _face_. Pete stares at it.

_You may know him better as the CEO of Christmas Magic. The person in charge of bringing the joy and good cheer of the season to all of your homes_. Generic shots of people looking delighted around Christmas trees, holding bright red steaming mugs, wearing hideous Christmas sweaters. Pete is aghast. Why is he in this ad! _But,_ the ad helpfully informs him, _this Christmas, Pete Wentz needs our help_.

“What?” Pete says out loud. He definitely does not need anyone’s help.

_You see_ , continues the serious-yet-upbeat narrator of the commercial, _Pete has always been unlucky in love_.

“What?” yelps Pete.

_You know the type_ , the commercial adds.

“The _type_?” repeats Pete. He is now standing directly in front of the television, staring at paparazzi shots of himself going to red carpet events alone, like, Jesus Christ, where did all this footage _come_ from?

_So, this Christmas, wouldn’t it be great if the person who got the Christmas Magic happy ending…was Pete Wentz, Mister Christmas himself?_

“Whaaaaaaaaa…?” breathes Pete. No, seriously, what is _happening_?

_Here’s what you can do to help! Last Christmas, Pete met a gorgeous redheaded piano player who charmed him with song, and then slipped out of his grasp. Do you happen to know who that piano player is? Are you yourself that cute, talented piano player? Then we’re looking for you! Send your best guesses for Pete’s happy ending to getpetemagic at christmasmagic dot com, and here’s hoping our best Christmas Magic movie this year will be the one all of us help Pete write! And remember! Drop by one of our stores to vote for what else you think Pete could do to enjoy some Christmas magic in his life!_ There is one last shot of him, and actually, it’s a good picture, like, definitely one of the better ones, but that is not the point.

The photo of his face and the accompanying twinkling Christmas Magic music gives way to a commercial for adult vitamins.

“What,” says Pete. “The fuck. Was that.”

“You haven’t seen that?” his mother asks mildly from behind him. “They’ve been playing that ad constantly. Everyone thinks it’s genius marketing, darling. Where’d you come up with the fable of the redheaded piano player?”

“I am going to fucking kill Bebe,” Pete announces flatly, and storms out of the room.

***

It’s a weekend and usually Pete tries to be really good about not bothering his employees on a weekend, like, he tries to be a model employer that way, but oh, yes, he uses the cell phone number he has for Bebe at this moment, and Bebe picks up because he’s still her _boss_.

“Is this a fucking joke?” he demands.

“Probably not?” she suggests. “What are we talking about?”

“What are we talking about?” Pete shrieks. “ _What are we talking about?_ Why is my personal life our Christmas marketing strategy? Why have you turned my life into a Christmas Magic movie?”

“Hang on,” Bebe says. “You’re just figuring out what our Christmas marketing is _now_?”

That gives Pete pause. Okay, maybe some of this _is_ on him. Maybe he could have, like, looked at any of the many Christmas marketing files Bebe had handed him over the past few months.

“Pete, I gave you the sketch of this in _August_. I gave you the rough cut of the ad in _September_. I asked if you were okay with it, and you said _yes_.”

“I…maybe never looked at anything you gave me,” Pete admits.

“ _Pete_!” Bebe chides him.

“The Christmas marketing is always the same shit! Home, family, holidays, joy, jingle bells, fa la la!” Pete rants as he paces around his bedroom.

“I was never in charge of your Christmas marketing before!” Bebe retorts.

“Well, obviously I have now realized my mistake. You need to pull the ad.”

There’s a moment of silence.

“Bebe,” Pete growls.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t pull the ad, Pete. It is _unbelievably_ popular. You would not believe the amount of support you have out there. Everyone _loves_ you. Our sales have been through the roof because everyone keeps going to the stores to vote on their favorite Christmas Magic movie tropes for you to reenact with your redheaded piano player. You’ve made our customers _actually care_ about this company. This is your own form of Christmas magic.”

Pete doesn’t have a response to this, because, well, he _has_ seen the sales sheets. The stock price is up, too. He had been impressed but hadn’t really thought more about it. He didn’t know it was all due to, like, the entire country matchmaking for him. “Jesus,” he sighs, and closes his eyes. What the _fuck_.

“Look,” Bebe says, “no one’s going to find this redheaded piano player for you, I’m sure. So we’ll just be like, ‘Oh, too bad, never found Pete someone to kiss under the mistletoe, but here’s Pete enjoying some hot cocoa, here’s Pete ice skating,’ you know, whatever.”

“People will want to see me enjoying hot cocoa?” says Pete skeptically.

“When I’m done with you, people are going to _love_ you,” Bebe says smugly.

Pete isn’t sure that’s what he wants. “You’re supposed to be selling the company, not me,” Pete points out.

“But you _are_ the company. It’s a family company. That’s its whole _thing_. I’m telling you, all this means is this year you go out to Vermont and you do more Christmas stuff than you usually do. For, like, a day. While we take pictures.”

Pete considers the idea, chewing on his bottom lip, then says, “As long as you pick a day for the photo shoot after it’s already snowed up there, there’s no point making me do Christmas magic stuff and there’s no snow around.”


	4. Chapter 4

Vicky is not the type to watch the Christmas Magic Network, like, please, don’t insult her. But she’s got this roommate and all the roommate has done since, like, _October_ , is watch this fucking network and its fucking movies. Most of the time Vicky is out – rehearsing with the band or playing a gig or working one of the three jobs she’s got to work to afford her life – so usually she just flits through the living room, mumbles a hi to Lucy, and registers that yup, it’s another Christmas Magic movie.

And then she gets a cold, the really vicious type that makes it impossible to do literally anything other than sit mindless on the sofa and stare at the television. She can’t breathe and she’s speaking entirely in a croak and she doesn’t have the energy to fight with Lucy about what they’re watching. Usually she would stay holed up in her room and not expose Lucy to the grossness but Lucy gave the cold to _her_ , and Vicky cannot stand another minute in her room, and so she and Lucy are both on the couch together sniffling pathetically and watching Christmas Magic movies.

And Vicky knows she’s really sick because actually, they aren’t that bad.

Her phone dings with a text. Patrick. _how are you feeling?_ He’s really such a sweetheart, Vicky loves him.

She texts back, _hey, have you ever watched these Christmas magic movies?_

Patrick’s response is, _…no_.

_Theyre not so bad_ , Vicky texts back.

_I’m really worried about you, how high is your fever_ , is what Patrick replies.

Vicky snorts and sends him a middle finger emoji.

There’s a commercial break and Lucy sniffs, “I am going to make some more tea, do you want some?”

Vicky fervently says, “ _Yes_ ,” because she has been surviving on tea, basically.

On television, the ad drones, _Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III_. Vicky is in the process of reaching over to Lucy’s side of the couch so she can pause the television so she doesn’t have to listen to the vapid Christmas ads, but then she looks at the screen and she thinks vaguely, in her fuzzy-cotton mind, _Huh_. _He looks familiar_.

She shakes her head a little to clear it. She must really be feeling sick. But the ad keeps showing the guy’s face, all different pictures of him, and she can’t help it, he just looks _so_ familiar. She would say that maybe he’s just one of those guys with a pleasantly generic face, except that he’s not. He’s got a stand-out face, a memorable one, a better-than-usual smile and truly out-of-this-world eyes, they light up every photo flitting across the television screen. She feels, annoyingly, like she’s seen those eyes before. Unusual golden eyes, where the fuck has she seen them?

_Last Christmas, Pete met a gorgeous redheaded piano player who charmed him with song, and then slipped out of his grasp._

Vicky sits up so fast the box of tissues falls off her lap. Because she suddenly remembers _exactly_ where she’s seen those gold eyes before.

_Know that piano player? Then we’re looking for you! Send your best guesses—_

“What the fuck,” Vicky says, more loudly than she intended. Maybe she shouts it.

“What’s the matter?” Lucy calls from the kitchen.

Vicky lunges for the remote control on Lucy’s side of the couch and pauses the commercial. “Oh my _God_ ,” she says, dialing Patrick furiously.

Lucy appears in the room, looking breathlessly confused. “What? What is going on?”

Vicky points to the television. “I know that guy,” she says nonsensically, and then Patrick answers the phone, sounding surprised. They don’t usually call each other, text is much their preferred method of communication. “Patrick,” she says. “Patrick, Patrick, Patrick.”

“Yeah, that’s…that’s my name. Are you okay?”

“ _Patrick_. Do you remember the guy from last Christmas Eve?”

“The guy from last Christmas Eve? No. Who did you hook up with last Christmas Eve?”

“No, not me. _You_.”

Patrick laughs. “Are you high? I didn’t hook up with anyone last Christmas Eve.”

“No, no,” Vicky say impatiently. “Do you remember the guy who left us the thousand-dollar tip?”

“I remember the thousand-dollar tip. I never met the guy.”

“But I did. And, Patrick. _He’s looking for you_.”

“He’s…what? How can he be looking for me? I literally never even laid eyes on the guy.”

“He’s _looking for you_.”

“How the fuck do you even think you know this? Did he go back into the bar asking for me?”

That gives Vicky pause. “Huh. No. Not that I know of.”

“Then he can’t be looking for me very hard, because that would be a super-easy way to locate me.”

Maybe she’s mistaken here. She _is_ sick. Maybe her memory isn’t working right. But no, Vicky looks back at the frozen image on the television screen and knows she’s right. That is definitely the sad guy with the pretty eyes who liked Patrick’s taste in Christmas songs. Vicky had teased Patrick about it for a good two weeks afterward, before moving on to other topics to tease Patrick about. “It’s on TV,” Vicky explains.

“What’s on TV?”

“He’s looking for you on TV.”

There’s a moment of silence. “That’s a terrible place to look for me, I’m not on TV, seriously, are you okay?”

“No, no, I mean there’s an _advertisement_. He took out an ad to try to find you. He’s like, I don’t know, some big deal kajillionaire guy. Do you know that guy, Lucy? Does he own the Christmas Magic Network?” Vicky gestures to the paused television screen.

“I don’t know who that guy is.” Lucy sounds incredulous, like she has no idea what’s going on right now.

Lucy is zero help, all she does is watch these fucking movies, you’d think she’d know a little bit about who this guy is. Vicky turns back to Patrick’s phone call. “I think he’s some big deal guy, Patrick, and he’s looking for the redheaded piano player who slipped out of his grasp last Christmas.”

“Vick, I don’t think that’s me. I was never _in_ his grasp.”

“It is definitely you. I recognize this guy. How many bars do you think he went into last Christmas that had redheaded piano players in them?”

“Would we call me redheaded?” Vicky can hear the frown in Patrick’s voice.

God, Patrick is so goddamn frustrating. “ _Yes_. And _focus_.”

“Focus on what? Vicky, I really think you’re hallucinating or something—”

“There is a kajillionaire looking for you. A hot kajillionaire. And you are as single as a one-dollar bill.”

“Is that an expression? I don’t think that’s an expression.”

“I’m going to email this guy.”

Patrick snorts. “Yeah, okay, knock yourself out, Vicky. He’s not looking for me.”


	5. Chapter 5

“You should read some of them,” Bebe says.

“You know what, that is a good idea, except for the fact that I am never going to read any of them,” Pete replies.

“But maybe one of them is really from your hot redheaded piano player.”

“He’s not ‘my’ hot redheaded piano player. You blew that whole thing completely out of proportion. It was literally, like, I listened to a few songs. That’s it.”

“Okay, fine. But maybe one of them is _a_ hot redheaded piano player,” Bebe amends. “And who is any of us to turn down a hot redheaded piano player, am I right?”

“A hot redheaded piano player that you want me to pretend to fall in love with during a tree-trimming experience where I tell him a sob story over my favorite ornament?”

“I mean, that is not required, but yes, I would love that.”

Pete rolls his eyes and stands up, grabbing his notebook and his pen and his cup of coffee. “Let’s get this meeting over with.”

“Pete, this is a _good_ meeting,” Bebe assures him, following him down the hallway. “The company has never been doing better!”

Yeah, great, the company has never been doing better, at the expense of Pete being talked about _everywhere_. The New York _Post_ called him _the lonely billionaire who can’t get a date_ , and, like, great, Pete is super-excited about that one, as you can imagine. But hey, his parents have never been so proud of him. They’ve got a pathetic, publicly-ridiculed son who’s the poster child for personal failure, but who cares as long as the stock price keeps going up, right?

Bebe’s been asked to present about the success of the Christmas marketing campaign, and Pete’s proud of her, he really is, but he can’t think of anything worse than sitting here watching that embarrassing advertisement and dissecting the consumer response to it. _On a scale of one to ten, how hopeless is Pete Wentz’s life?_ That’s practically an item on the agenda.

Bebe gets up there. Bebe plays the godawful advertisement. Pete feels everyone else in the meeting laughing at him silently. Bebe sets up her PowerPoint slide. It features, on the first slide, a photograph of Pete and the headline _Lonely Billionaire Christmas Magic!_ in the network’s proprietary snowflake-y font. Pete’s life is a parody of itself.

Bebe walks the room through the theory behind the marketing campaign – something something “consumer engagement” something something. Pete isn’t really paying attention, which he knows is what got him into this trouble in the first place but, now that that trouble is done, how much worse can it get?

“The email address has been incredibly popular,” Bebe continues, advancing the slide. It’s a collage of photographs of redheads, most of them seated at pianos. “As you can imagine, we get plenty of spam and offensive responses but hey, that’s just the internet for you. Many of the responses are quite serious.”

“How many dick pics have you gotten?” asks Shane, and his little frat club friend Chris snickers at him, and Pete glares and wishes the chair would swallow him up. Chairs never swallow him up when he asks them to, they’re super-unhelpful that way.

Bebe smiles tightly. “Most of the responses seem to be in earnest, as I said, but it’s highly doubtful that there were so many redheaded piano players in Chicago last Christmas Eve.”

That’s an understatement, Pete thinks.

“Sometimes,” Bebe continues, “we don’t just get photographs, we get what basically seem like audition tapes. It’s kind of like we’re running a record label. That has raised an idea for a marketing scheme in the future. Some of these people are really good and we might be able to put together a really great album of holiday standards featuring them. It would be a great tie-in. Here’s my personal favorite.” Bebe advances to the next slide and clicks play on the video embedded in it. “Not a holiday tune,” she says, as the video gets underway, “but a really great voice.”

Pete has been thinking of the most dramatic ways to fire Shane and Chris (he will actually not be allowed to fire Shane and Chris, because being CEO of your own company is a total drag surrounded by bureaucracy about _rules_ and _laws_ ), but he sits up straight when the video starts playing. Because that right there is the view from the end of the bar, the very seat where Pete was sitting on Christmas Eve last year. He’d know it anywhere. He’s thought about it a lot. And it’s the exact view Pete had, because there’s a redhead in a fedora playing the piano. The only difference is it’s not Christmas, there’s no sprig of holly in the fedora, there are no twinkling lights, there’s just that redhead and his fucking voice. And he’s singing Saves the Day. He’s literally singing _Saves the Day_.

It would be wrong to say that Pete fell in love with this dude on Christmas Eve last year. Pete’s been insisting on that all along. There was no way Pete fell in love on Christmas Eve, that’s a ridiculous notion and Pete knows it to be true, because Pete falls in love right now, listening to that voice singing _Through Being Cool_. That’s when Pete crash-lands into full-fledged infatuation. A piano player in a random, unremarkable bar singing Saves the Day, like an arrow straight to Pete’s heart, Pete _loves_ Saves the Day. “What the fuck,” he says before he can help it, his eyes wide in shock. But what the _fuck_ , Bebe’s stupid ad campaign actually found the actual fucking redheaded piano player, and he turns out to be even better than any of Pete’s fantasies about him, Pete would never have dared fantasize about him playing pop punk songs.

Pete becomes belatedly aware of every eye in the room on him instead of the extraordinary video Bebe is playing.

“Um,” he says. “I mean.”

“Oh, my God,” Shane says, “is that him? Is that the piano player?”

“Hang on,” Chris says, “there was really a piano player? I thought this was all a marketing gimmick.”

“If we have actually located the piano player, then we are marketing the fuck out of this,” Shane decides helpfully. “People are going to eat this up with a fucking _spoon_.”

The video hits the end of the clip and freezes. Pete stares at the last frame. It’s grainy and imperfect but the visual doesn’t matter: Pete would recognize that voice anywhere. He manages to look at Bebe, and he can just imagine what his face looks like, because Bebe looks _shocked_. Bebe didn’t expect them to ever actually find the piano player, clearly. Maybe Bebe herself thought Pete had made up the whole story about the piano player. Pete doesn’t blame her, this whole thing has been ridiculous from the start. But now, like, _there he is_.

Pete says, “Okay, this meeting’s over,” and stands up.

There are general grumbly protests but Pete’s the fucking CEO and he plays that card basically never so he just says, “Yup, bye, everyone,” and walks the fuck out.


	6. Chapter 6

Bebe shows up in Pete’s office almost immediately, looking breathless, just as Pete expected her to when he ended the meeting.

“Is that him?” she demands. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

“Where did you get that clip?” Pete asks, astonished. He still can’t process this. “He sent that in?”

“Move over,” Bebe says, shoving Pete away from his desk, and then she’s tapping at his laptop keyboard, accessing the email account they’re using for this stupid ad campaign. “I flagged all of the emails I took stuff from for the presentation,” she murmurs, clicking on things, “hang on, yup, here it is.” She presses play on the attachment and that _voice_ fills Pete’s office again.

Pete actually _shudders_. It feels like destiny or something, like, that’s just how it feels, Pete can’t help it. “What’s his name?” he asks.

“Patrick,” Bebe says, and steps away so Pete can read the email.

The email isn’t from Patrick. It’s from someone named Vicky. _Hello – I was the bartender at the bar Pete Wentz stopped in last Christmas Eve. Pretty sure he’s looking for my friend Patrick, photo and video attached. If I’m right, Pete should totally feel free to email him, he’s very, very, tragically single_.

Great, Pete thinks, poor Patrick is considered as pathetic as Pete, they make a great match.

“So?” Bebe asks.

“So what?” Pete counters.

“Are you going to email him?”

“No,” Pete says immediately. “No. That would be ridiculous. Like. This isn’t supposed to be a real thing. This isn’t a real thing. I’m not going to... I’m not going to bother this guy with...” He’s not going to bother this poor, innocent piano player with his disaster of a life, that isn’t fair.

Bebe says, “I’m just going to forward you this email.”

“Bebe,” Pete protests half-heartedly.

“You can think it over, you can do it in your own time. You know, if you want.”

“I don’t want to,” Pete denies feebly. “This is silly. I just heard him play the piano and sing a few songs.”

“Prince Charming danced one single dance with Cinderella and scoured the kingdom for her,” Bebe says solemnly, like that’s an actual compelling argument.

“That was a fairy tale, Bebe.”

“And you’re in charge of Christmas Magic movies. Fairy tales happen, Pete Wentz. Maybe one is happening to you.” 

“Please leave my office, Bebe, before you say any more embarrassing things.”

“If the shoe fits,” says Bebe, shrugging.

“Now, please. Please leave now,” says Pete.

Bebe laughs as she leaves and calls back, “Once upon a time!”

***

He is not going to email Patrick. Like, that is patently ridiculous.

Pete sits in his living room with some really good weed and thinks really hard about how he’s not going to email Patrick. He’s just going to, like, listen to him some more. And he’s going to study the photograph attached to the email. He didn’t really get to see Patrick’s face that well last Christmas Eve. Fuck, he did not need to know Patrick had lips that looked like that. That was unnecessary information.

His dick registers its disagreement with this assessment that that information was unnecessary but he’ll deal with that later.

Right now he’s busy trying to discern the color of Patrick’s eyes behind the glasses he’s wearing in the picture. The photo Vicky sent along is a cute one, sweet and happy. Patrick is clearly posing for someone he loves, posing playfully, his head tipped and his mouth open wide on a cheerfully silly smile. It is a _great_ picture.

“Vicky is a good friend to you,” Pete murmurs, and listens to Patrick’s voice soaring its way along _Through Being Cool_ again. How Patrick isn’t already some huge star is absolutely beyond Pete’s comprehension.

He has no explanation but the ensorcelling quality of Patrick’s voice for the fact that he finds himself looking at a blank open email to Patrick Stump. Well, the really good weed might also provide some explanation.

But the blank email stumps him (no pun intended). What’s he supposed to say? _Hey, Patrick, I’m such a loser that I have to email random guys I was creeping on in bars whose contact info I only have because their friends saw a national ad campaign about what a loser I am?_

“Why the fuck would he even want to talk to you, Pete Wentz?” Pete asks himself, and closes the laptop. He knows the answer to that question, actually: The only reason anybody ever talks to Pete Wentz is because he’s Pete Wentz, CEO of Christmas Magic. If Pete had had the balls to go up to Patrick on Christmas Eve, he wouldn’t have been Pete Wentz, CEO, and maybe then, maybe – who is he kidding, Patrick wouldn’t have cared, because why would he? And if Pete emails him now, well, now Pete _is_ Pete Wentz, CEO, and Patrick would email back wanting something, because everyone who talks to Pete Wentz, CEO, wants something.

This is why Christmas Magic doesn’t exist, Pete thinks morosely. Not for him. Total fucking lie. Some people don’t get the fairy tale, Bebe’s wrong.

“Fuck Christmas magic,” Pete says feelingly, and takes another hit.

***

The first floor of the Vermont house is so crowded with guests that Pete’s outside just so he can breathe.

Maeve comes out and says, “It is freezing out here, what are you doing?”

Pete grunts. He’s not sure what he’s doing. He’s not sure he even realized it was freezing, to be honest.

Maeve wanders over, sits next to him, nudges her shoulder against his. “The big shot CEO doesn’t want to go and mingle?”

Pete snorts. “No. That is the last thing I feel like doing. It’s fucking…” Pete waves his hand around. “It’s fucking Thanksgiving. Shouldn’t we just have a little family dinner? You, me, Mom, Dad? Like, why the fuck is it a goddamn gala in there?”

Maeve sighs and rests her head on his shoulder and says, “That is never how our family does Thanksgiving. Remember when we were little and we’d set up our own little parade on the third floor?”

“And hope they’d remember to send us up some turkey?” says Pete caustically. “Yes. I remember.”

Maeve is silent for a second, then says, “I think usually they gave us turkey.”

“Okay, yes, you’re right,” Pete admits. He looks out toward the mountains, a darker black against the night sky flung over with stars. Vermont is pretty, and when he was a child he loved it when they would come out here, and he would spend his days skiing and snowboarding and snowmobiling. That was before he grew resentful over how much he and Maeve were constantly left on their own. _Christmas magic, my ass_ , Pete thinks.

Maeve says suddenly, “So how’s your love life going?”

“Oh, no,” Pete groans. Just what he wants to talk about: the fucking ad campaign.

“I mean, I’ve got to admit, I was surprised you let them do it.”

“Well,” Pete says.

“You didn’t let them do it?”

“Hmm,” says Pete.

Maeve lifts her head up off his shoulder and turns to face him. “Oh, fuck, you didn’t _know_?”

“I may not have read any of the proposals,” Pete phrases delicately.

Maeve starts laughing.

“It’s not funny!”

“It’s _hilarious_. You’re the CEO of the fucking company, Pete! You don’t even know what your Christmas marketing is going to be?”

“I thought it was going to be something along the lines of, you know, uncomfortable Folgers Coffee incest!” Pete defends himself.

“That does not sound as good as I think you seem to think,” Maeve remarks. “I think you would want to know if your marketing was incestuous.”

“You know what I mean! Stupid happy Christmas shit!”

“It’s almost difficult to believe you’re the CEO of a company called Christmas Magic.”

“Not willingly,” Pete mutters.

“I know,” Maeve says sympathetically. And then, “So there’s no redheaded piano player?”

Pete hesitates.

You can’t hesitate in front of Maeve, she leaps in for the kill. “Hang on, there _is_ a redheaded piano player?”

“Hey, how are things going with you?” Pete asks heartily. “How’s the new job? Do you like it?”

“You’re not dating him, are you? Pete, if you are dating someone and you didn’t introduce them to _me_ —”

“I’m not dating anyone. Maeve, I am not a good person to date.”

“You’re an excellent person to date and you need to not let the assholes you’ve dated so far convince you otherwise.”

Pete makes a noncommittal sound. “They’ve made pretty persuasive arguments.”

“So if you’re not dating him, are you just fucking him?”

Pete winces. “ _Maeve_.”

“What? I’m trying to figure out the status of your love life since you’re so fucking cagey—”

“I’m not doing anything with him, okay? He’s just a cute redheaded piano player I listened to last Christmas Eve. That’s it.”

“And then what? You lost his number?”

“No, I never got his number.”

Maeve frowns. “How come?”

“Maeve, I didn’t _talk_ to him.” Pete gestures to himself. “Me, terrible person to date, remember?”

“I’ve already lodged my disagreement with that statement. So this marketing campaign is a real thing, then? We really are trying to track down your long-lost love?”

“Maeve,” Pete says, fixing her with a look. “He is _not_ —”

She waves her hand impatiently. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. So how’s it going? Any luck so far?”

Pete looks out toward the dark mountains. Pete considers the video he’s played out, the photo he doesn’t let himself masturbate in front of. He says, “No. No luck.”

There’s a moment of silence. Then Maeve says, sounding wistful about it, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry our company’s marketing campaign hasn’t found me a boyfriend?” he asks sardonically.

“Sorry you’re lonely.”

Pete lets the sentence rest over him, like snow blanketing the terrain of his heart. He says, “I’m okay.”

“You don’t deserve to be lonely. I wish I felt like you know that. You deserve all the best things, everything you want.”

“I know.” Pete tries a smile. “I’m going to embrace the single life like you.”

“Yeah, but you’re not like me. I _like_ being single. I am very happy to come home to an empty house and not have to deal with someone else in my space. You have always wanted to come home to a house with someone to love in it, someone who loves you back, and you deserve that. You really do. I want that for you. You have got to promise me.” Maeve puts her hand along his cheek and forces him to keep her gaze. “You have to promise me,” she says gravely, “that if you see another cute redheaded piano player, you’ll talk to him. You won’t tell yourself he’s better off without you, or it will end badly. You’ll tell yourself he could be perfect for you, and you will go and talk to him. Promise me.”

Pete swallows thickly. “Maeve,” he says.

“Promise me,” Maeve repeats simply.

Pete lets out a frustrated exhale, closes his eyes. There’s the muted sound of the party going on inside, where Pete had felt so lonely he’d gone outside, to sit all alone on the back porch, in the vast empty wilderness around their house, as lonely as could be. Maybe, he thinks. Maybe he doesn’t have the willpower to be lonely anymore. “I promise,” he says.


	7. Chapter 7

“I’m just saying,” Joe is saying, “I’m pretty sure it’s a capybara.”

“I don’t think it’s a capybara,” Patrick tells him.

“How do you know?”

“Because I just don’t think a capybara is living in your heating vents.”

“Well, I’m telling you, it’s _something_.”

“A rat?” Patrick suggests. “It feels like it could be a rat.”

“No, it’s cuter than a rat,” Joe insists.

“Well, as scintillating as this conversation is,” Patrick says, as the train squeals its way as loudly as possible into the station, “this is my stop.”

“So it is. Good show tonight, dude.”

“Right back at you,” Patrick says. “Get me some pictures of the capybara.”

Joe waggles his index finger as if to say _Great idea_ , and Patrick steps through the doors and out onto the platform. He’s rolling his eyes but he’s also smiling. He loves his band, what can he say.

On most nights after a show, Patrick is too wired to sleep right away. Anyway, his preferred living schedule is nocturnal. So he makes himself a bowl of cereal when he gets home and he turns on his Netflix on mute because he doesn’t wake up his roommate and because his ears are still ringing a little from the show. When he’s done with the cereal, he stretches out on the couch. He’s still not tired, so he grabs his laptop. He thinks maybe he’ll noodle around with GarageBand but decides to check his email first, because he handed out his info for some future gigs and maybe one of them has already followed through. Hope springs eternal and all that.

There’s a bunch of spam, and he’s clicking through deleting all of it when he comes to an email with the subject _this is probably a really bad idea but im doing it anyway: hi_. Patrick looks at the subject quizzically, then looks at who sent the email. _Pwentz@christmasmagic.com_.

Patrick blinks. Patrick opens the email.

_Hi so you don’t know me *at all* but last xmas eve I happened to be walking by the bar where you were playing and heard you singing. You’ve got basically the best voice ive ever heard, fyi. When I was younger I thought maybe I would form a band and I used to scream lyrics really loudly into a microphone. My band never went anywhere, we probably needed a singer like you. anyway I had a hot toddy and listened to you play all of the most depressing xmas songs of all time. I really respect that. and I mean: frankie goes to Hollywood – total respect. I didn’t say anything to you that night and I kinda managed somehow to promise my sister that id talk to you if I ever came across you again. I did NOT approve any of this marketing campaign thing but your friend vicky sent your contact info in and here we are I guess. This is weird but lmk if you want to grab a drink sometime or something. No pressure Idek if you knew she sent your contact info in, you might already have a boyfriend or girlfriend and this is really creepy and if so im sorry you can delete this don’t worry about it. But if not and youre lonely or whatever and just want to kill a few hours we could totally get drinks. I am somewhat more entertaining in person than in email. I think. --pete_

“What the fuck,” Patrick breathes, and reads the email again.

Then he calls Vicky.

“Do you know what fucking time it is?” Vicky complains when she picks up.

“Vicky,” Patrick whispers fiercely, “do you know who emailed me?”

“Santa Claus?” Vicky mumbles.

“ _The fucking Christmas Magic dude_ ,” Patrick hisses.

“What!” Vicky shrieks. It’s so loud Patrick winces and thinks maybe she managed to wake up his roommate, she’s that loud.

“Shh,” he says.

“I can’t ‘shh’!” she protests. “The hot kajillionaire emailed you?”

“Listen to this,” Patrick says, and whisper-shouts the email to her.

“Wow,” she says when he’s done. “He really did email you. Did you write back yet?”

“No, I didn’t write back! I don’t even know him!”

“That’s usually why you meet someone for drinks: to get to know them.”

“He’s like… He’s…” Patrick stares at the email. “I can’t believe he’s really looking for me.”

“Believe it, Patrick Stump. How, exactly, could he be mistaken right now? My submission could not have been any clearer. And you know what? He sounds like a guy who needs to get laid. You know who _else_ is a guy who needs to get laid?” Vicky gasps dramatically. “Surprise! It’s you, Patrick!”

“Very funny,” Patrick says drily. “If he needs to get laid, he’s a hot kajillionaire. What does he need me for?”

“Don’t you want to find out?”

Patrick hesitates. Okay, sure, he doesn’t date a lot. Usually whoever he dates ends up fuming, _You know, you’re already married to your music_ , and stomping out. The point is, he doesn’t exactly get wooed a lot, and he’s got to admit it’s nice. And also terrifying. He’s not sure how he’s supposed to act here. “I don’t have the best track record,” Patrick points out delicately.

“Obviously neither does he. He’s asking out a random stranger he used an advertising campaign to track down.”

That’s a good point. Maybe, hot kajillionaire or no, this guy’s standards won’t be impossible. He’s still not entirely convinced that this isn’t some elaborate mistake – how often do rich CEOs walk into random bars and fall for unknown piano players? It’s like Patrick fell into an alternate universe where he won some kind of billionaire lottery – but if the guy’s standards aren’t that high, and if his main attraction to Patrick is music in the first place, as everything seems to indicate, then, well, maybe it wouldn’t be the biggest disaster to meet him for a drink.

“Don’t you want to know what it’s like to date a kajillionaire?” Vicky wheedles. “Just for a little while?”

Half of him thinks that sounds like it could be interesting, and the other half thinks, no way, that is not his world at all.

“It’s one drink,” Vicky goes on. “Literally one drink. Have him come to the bar on a night when you’re playing. We can set up a hand signal for me to rescue you if it’s going poorly.”

“Maybe,” Patrick says finally. His eyes rove over the guy's email. _If you're lonely or whatever_. Something about that phrasing strikes Patrick as coming from a kindred spirit. Because maybe, sometimes, Patrick _is_ a little lonely. Maybe his music doesn't cuddle as much as he would like, okay? And his music never actually sucks his dick, Vicky's not wrong to point out the allure of getting laid. Maybe a drink with someone who seems interested in him, a drink with someone else who feels _lonely or whatever_ sometimes, would be a good idea. “Maybe,” he says again. But his finger clicks _reply_. 


	8. Chapter 8

Pete tells no one – _absolutely no one_ – that he has a date with Patrick. Telling people things is getting him into an enormous amount of trouble lately. This is going to be his secret.

He can’t believe it’s true, anyway. He read Patrick’s email response roughly 47 times before he managed to collect himself enough to write back. He had never expected Patrick to respond at all, never mind to respond with a proposed date and time for a drink.

_Hi_ , Patrick had written. _This is really weird, I’m not going to lie, and I’m still not entirely convinced that you actually have the right person here, but you did reference Frankie Goes to Hollywood, so maybe you *do* mean me. I’m going to be playing at the bar next Tuesday night, the 17 th, from 8 pm until close. If you haven’t changed your mind before then, you’re totally welcome to stop by. And then, if you realize I’m not the person you’re looking for, you can duck out, no hard feelings. But, if you’re feeling lonely or whatever, I get it and I’m totally up for a drink or two to keep that at bay. –Patrick _

_If you’re feeling lonely or whatever, I get it_. Pete read that particular part of the email an additional 127 times, letting it ring in his soul, letting echoes of it whisper through his blood. Because, well, it would be nice, wouldn’t it? Chasing loneliness away with someone who understood?

Pete emailed back as soon as he’d convinced himself the email was for-real and not just a fevered hallucination: _I’ve got the right person. I’ll see you on Tuesday_.

And then he promptly spent the days until Tuesday freaking the fuck out.

On Tuesday, he ducks out of work as early as he dares without raising suspicion. He showers the Christmas Magic CEO off of himself and then he carefully rebuilds the Pete Wentz part of himself. He goes for comfortable baggy jeans and a worn-in cozy hoodie with a Renaissance tapestry design. He puts his hair back into a messy bun and spends a long moment studying himself in the mirror. He’s nothing to write home about – he certainly wouldn’t date himself – but at least he recognizes himself, at least he’s not the stiff make-believe persona he is at work. It’s been a long time since he wore his own skin, and it takes him the entire Uber ride to the bar to settle into it.

And then there he is, standing in front of that same fateful door. He’s never returned to this bar, which is weird, since he clearly never forgot Patrick. But no, surely it would have been weirder for him to show up at some random point in the last year and be like, _Hey, I heard you sing one night and I think you’re fantastic_.

So instead now he’s turned Patrick into the focus of a national marketing campaign, which is obviously so much less weird. Pete quirks a sardonic smile at himself and considers going home. He’s an embarrassing idiot.

The Chicago wind is icy and unforgiving and Pete’s only wearing a hoodie because hey, real!Pete is bad about dressing appropriately for the weather, unlike CEO!Pete, who always has the proper weight coat on. His Uber’s already gone, and even if he called himself a new one, he couldn’t wait in this frigid cold without getting frostbite, so he’s going to have to go into the bar to wait anyway.

So he braces himself, and he goes in.

The bar is decorated exactly as it had been last Christmas Eve, blinking lights and some festive tinsel. It’s somewhat more crowded, and Pete stands a moment just past the velvet curtains, letting his eyes adjust. Under the sound of laughter and the buzz of conversation through the room, Patrick’s voice cuts through, ringing-bell clear, just as Pete remembers it being. The video is a pale copy, doesn’t do Patrick’s voice justice. The real thing, live and in-person, bowls him over. He no longer has any doubt why Patrick lingered in his brain this entire year – anyone with that kind of voice _would_.

Pete hesitates, looking around the room for a place to sit, and locates an empty table for two on the opposite side of the bar from the piano. At first he’s disappointed to be so far away from Patrick, but then he considers that maybe this is a good thing: If he loses his nerve before Patrick takes a break, he can slip out unnoticed.

Patrick is singing some kind of minor-key version of _Winter Wonderland_ , it’s seriously the most mournful thing Pete’s ever heard, he’s fascinated by it, so much so that he doesn’t notice the bartender until she says, “You want another hot toddy?”

His eyes snap to her, and yes, it’s the same bartender from Christmas Eve. “Hi,” Pete croaks, caught off-guard. He thought he’d be incognito a little bit longer.

“Hi,” she replies, with an amused grin. “Your hair got long.”

“That’s what hair does,” Pete says. Okay, maybe he’s a little defensive.

“It looks good on you.” The bartender shrugs. “I’ll get you a hot toddy, he should be due for a break soon.”

“Um,” says Pete, deciding to be brave. “Can you bring me whatever he likes to drink, too?”

She smiles at him. “Absolutely.”

Pete is ready to descend into all-new panic, but he doesn’t have time, because Patrick finishes playing _Winter Wonderland_ and then…gets up from the piano. Oh, fuck, Patrick is _already_ taking a break. Pete looks around him wildly, like maybe other people are there for a first date with Patrick and he can tell them to go first while he gets himself ready. Nobody else seems to be noticing the fact that they are in the presence of the hottest piano player in the Midwest.

Patrick adjusts his fedora on his head and says something to the bartender, who says something in reply and then points in Pete’s direction.

“Oh, fuck,” Pete says out loud, and wonders if there’s any possible way he could look like any more of a dork, like, he chose all the wrong clothes and he has ugly hair and what is he _doing_ here. Panic wells up deeply in Pete, that swamping muck of panic that he’s supposed to be better at handling, he learned all sorts of goddamn _techniques_ about managing his “mental illness,” and Pete hears perfectly the air quotes his mother used to put around that, and—

\--and Patrick is standing by the table.

“Hi,” Patrick says. Christmas lights blink off of Patrick’s glasses, obscuring whatever his expression is. His mouth (even more obscene in person) has a twist to it that could be curiosity? Or intrigue? Or repugnance? Who knows. “I’m Patrick,” he says.

Pete gets to his feet because that seems appropriate suddenly, extends his hand like he’s in a business meeting, and he’s appalled that these are undeniably his instincts now. “Hi,” he replies. “I’m Pete.”

Patrick shakes his hand and keeps studying him. Pete is pretty sure it’s curiosity, and curiosity feels like something he can work with.

“Have a seat?” he offers.

Patrick glances at his watch, then, to Pete’s relief, sits. “I’ve got a ten-minute break,” he explains. “I just wanted to see what time it is. The manager can be a hard-ass about the whole thing. Like there’s anyone in this bar who’s even listening.”

“I’m listening,” Pete says earnestly, following Patrick’s lead and sitting as well.

“Yeah, apparently.” Now Patrick’s smile is quizzical. “You’ve got to be the first person in the three years I’ve worked here.”

“Well, they are missing out,” Pete says heartily, deciding that _You’ve got the most incredible voice in the universe_ is laying it on a bit too thick and scuffling backward into, “Specifically they are missing out on emo versions of _Winter Wonderland_.”

Patrick looks startled, and for a moment Pete thinks that maybe that tease was ill-placed, and then Patrick bursts out laughing. “Look,” he says, “I’m an ignored piano player in a dive bar, I’m allowed to be a little emo.”

The laugh makes Pete’s insides uncoil enough to let him breathe. “No, I’m not knocking it,” he says. “I really feel like you made me truly grasp, for the first time, how creepy the pastor snowman is. Like, I don’t know, who names their snowman after a real person?”

“Right?” Patrick rejoins enthusiastically. “Imagine you come home from work one night and your neighbors built a snowman and they say to you, ‘Do you like it? We named it Pete.’ Creepy. Totally creepy.”

“And then what if they, like, turn around and knock its head off?” Pete suggests.

Patrick starts laughing again. “Very deliberate, right? ‘Oh, dear, look what happened to Pete’s head.’”

“You make me want to have an annoying neighbor to do this to,” Pete muses.

“My upstairs neighbors are raising a herd of elephants,” Patrick offers.

“Fuck, yes, let’s threaten them with creepy snowmen,” Pete declares.

Patrick laughs harder, and Pete feels so delighted with himself. Look at that. He made Patrick _laugh_. Maybe he is, after all, a worthwhile human being.

“Do not let me interrupt, I’m just going to slide these in here,” says the bartender, putting drinks in front of each of them.

“Oh,” Patrick says, “I don’t—”

“It’s just hot water with lemon and honey. For your voice,” the bartender says. Then she winks, and then she hurries away.

“I don’t drink while I’m working,” Patrick explains to Pete. “Manager, hard-ass, et cetera.”

“I asked her to bring a drink for you,” Pete says. “Sorry, I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“No, it’s fine. Also. You don’t need to buy me any drinks. This night gets split down the middle.” Patrick’s voice gains this totally intriguing hard don’t-fuck-with-me edge that Pete wants to know more about, definitely, in a different setting.

Pete nods. He will do anything to keep Patrick happy right now. “Yeah. Totally. It’s not a dive bar, by the way.” It’s a non sequitur, but he wants to get back to their ease of conversation.

“Huh?”

“You said it’s a dive bar, but it serves hot toddies.” Pete indicates his drink.

“First of all, I don’t actually think it does, I think Vicky just thinks you’re cute,” Patrick says.

Pete makes a dubious noise about that.

“Second of all,” Patrick continues, “it’s, like, a pretentious dive bar. You know what I mean? Like, it _wishes_ it was a dive bar.”

Pete laughs. “Okay, accurate description.”

“Hey, I know my dive bars,” Patrick says, mock prideful.

Pete smiles, impossibly charmed. “You’re, like, this pugnacious little emo starburst.”

“Starburst?”

Pete realizes how ridiculous that sounds. “Sorry, I—do weird word things sometimes.”

Patrick lifts his eyebrows. “Do weird word things?” he echoes.

Pete winces. Okay, that sounds like the opposite of someone who is addicted to words, he thinks. “I mean—”

“Do you think you might want to go back to work at some point?” asks a woman who comes up to their table. She is not tapping her toe in impatience but it is definitely implied. _Hard-ass manager_ , thinks Pete.

“Yes. Yup. Going right now.” Patrick stands, fiddles with his hat, mouths, _sorry_ , to Pete as he moves away.

Pete shakes his head a little. _Don’t worry about it_. He is staying right here.


	9. Chapter 9

Patrick’s fingers press the right keys and Patrick’s voice hits the right notes with the right words, but Patrick is thinking of the man whose table he just left. Pete. _Pete_. Pete with heavily watchful eyes Patrick can still feel on him. Pete with a grin bigger than his face. Pete who made him laugh with incredible ease.

Patrick thinks of Pete the entire time he plays, and he takes his next break early and slides into the seat opposite him and says immediately, “Are you a writer?”

Pete blinks. “What?”

“Weird word things. That’s what you said. You ‘do weird word things.’ I was thinking about it. Are you a writer?”

“Not really.”

“Not really?”

“I mean, I haven’t really written anything.”

“No?” Patrick feels sure this is a lie. There’s something about Pete’s posture, pitched forward cautiously, that makes Patrick think he’s on the right track here.

“Not anything anyone would want to read,” Pete amends.

“Novels?” Patrick guesses.

Pete hums. “More like poetry.” Then he shakes his head. “Ignore me. Pretend that’s not true. I am _not_ the pretentious fuck in the pretentious bar who writes poetry and drinks hot toddies.”

Patrick smiles, he hopes reassuringly. “You are exactly that pretentious fuck but you’re a very cute one, so it’s okay.”

Pete looks up at him through his eyelashes, purposely coquettish in a droll, tongue-in-cheek way that’s abruptly, impossibly hot. “Yeah?”

Patrick sucks in a breath and thinks that he should dial all of this down, he’s turned up to eleven and they’ve spoken for, like, ten minutes or something.

Lauren says, sing-song, “Paaaatrick,” and goddamn, she noticed the early break.

Patrick barely suppresses his huff of impatience and says, “Hold that thought.”

“Yeah,” Pete agrees, his mouth a wry quirking twist. “I definitely will.”

***

“So, emo piano boy—”

“I’m not actually emo.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t sound so skeptical.”

“Patrick, you just played a minor key version of _Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer_ that made that guy over there weep into his beer.”

“He’s weeping into his beer because that is a really terrible beer he ordered, seriously, someone intervene in that man’s life choices.”

“Now who’s the pretentious fuck?”

“Look, I avoid beers in bars, I’ve been scarred for life by this college bar I played in where they used to just, like, recycle people’s beers, like, pour the leftover bits into glasses for new customers, or just hand-over the unfinished glass, like, _gross_.”

“Hang on, I know this bar.”

“Where’d you go to college?”

“DePaul.”

“Ding ding ding.”

“I do _not_ remember that bar having a piano.”

“Dude, of course not. I played it with my band.”

“You have a _band_. Oh, my God, is it an _emo_ band?”

“Oh, look, I think my break is over.”

“Really hoping you do a version of _Santa Claus Is Coming to Town_ that emphasizes the surveillance state nature of it.”

***

“ _All I Want for Christmas Is You_?”

“That one was just for you.”

“…Was it?”

“I mean—I mean—To prove I can play a happy and cheerful song! Not because…”

“Not because all you want for Christmas is me?”

“Fuck you.”

“Patrick, honestly, you can just ask, if that’s how you feel.”

“You know what I mean!”

“I can put a little bow in the appropriate place. Or the inappropriate place.”

“This date was going so well up until now.”

“I mean, from my perspective I think it’s definitely taken a turn for the better.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“My parents would tell you I live perpetually ahead of myself.”

“Really? My parents would agree about me.”

“Yeah? Do they not approve of your emo band?”

“It’s not an emo band.”

“What is it?”

“It’s like—you know—why does it have be one genre?”

“I see, it has multiple influences?”

“Totally.”

“Mainly emo?”

“Time to get back to work.”

“Can you play _Santa Baby_ in this set?”

***

“Okay, I…didn’t think you were actually going to play _Santa Baby_.”

“Why not? I take requests.”

“Yeah, but… That song should not have happened in public.”

“For real?”

“Do you want to go outside with me?”

“Do you smoke?”

“No, Patrick, I want to make out with you.”

“Oh. I mean. Okay.” 

***

Patrick is pressed up against the brick wall, and it is _freezing_ , but Pete is so hot, his hands, the length of his body, his mouth, his tongue, his teeth.

This is ten out of ten, Patrick highly recommends it.

“Jesus,” he gasps, tearing at Pete’s hair so he can bury his hands in it.

“Totally,” Pete agrees. “Can I give you a hickey for when you go back in there?” He breathes over Patrick’s neck, like a practice love-bite.

“Oh, fuck,” Patrick groans, tipping his head back against the building, staring up at the star-spangled sky. It’s Chicago, it’s flooded with light pollution, objectively there should be very few visible stars in that sky, but Patrick’s impression is that the entire Milky Way is scattered up there, dazzling and brilliant. Everything seems to slow around Patrick, and he thinks he will remember this moment forever, hot and cold, breaths curling steam between them, stars brilliant around them.

“Is that a yes?” Pete asks. 

It is a yes to fucking everything, thinks Patrick fuzzily, and he doesn’t understand how he got here, what weird Christmas magic is happening around him, he doesn’t even _believe_ in Christmas magic. “That’s a yes,” he whispers, and then Pete bites, enthusiastic as a teenager. But this is _better_ than being a teenager, filled with abandon, throwing moments like this away instead of pressing them close. A feeling like _this_ needs to be clung to, cherished, tucked in a pocket so it doesn’t get lost, like, this isn’t run-of-the-mill. Under the stars of a crystal-clear night, Patrick closes his eyes.

He can still see the stars.

***

Patrick plays _All I Want for Christmas Is You_ again, because it’s the kind of song you can repeat, and this time he’s worried he actually might fucking _mean_ it, fuck.


	10. Chapter 10

[argh carbon made me an incredibly beautiful cover for this fic and naturally technology is REFUSING to cooperate right now, so hopefully I can figure everything out for Sunday's chapter because IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL AND I WANT EVERYONE TO SEE IT argh argh]

“I’ll close up,” Patrick tells Vicky. He’s nervous about saying this. He pointedly does not look over at Pete, still sitting at the table he’s been occupying all night. Vicky called last call and he didn’t move.

“Yeah?” says Vicky, and pointedly _does_ look over at Pete.

“Don’t,” Patrick hisses. “That’s embarrassing.”

Vicky _laughs_ at him, like this whole awkward situation is _funny_ , and says, “I like him.”

“You don’t even know him.”

“Patrick, the last time I saw you interested in anything that wasn’t music was…” Vicky considers thoughtfully. “Never,” she decides.

Patrick can’t even articulate a protest. “I’m not—It’s just—"

“You know it’s okay to take your eye off the ball for maybe a few hours, right? It’s not cheating on your musical dreams to have a drink with a cute guy. Like, your guitar isn’t going to get jealous and boil a rabbit or whatever.”

“Boil a rabbit?”

“That’s _Fatal Attraction_ , right?”

“Maybe the way to convince me to stay alone with a strange guy isn’t to reference a movie with the word ‘fatal’ in the title,” remarks Patrick.

“Good point. For real: Have fun. Text me if he murders you.”

“I’ll be dead.”

“I have no doubt you’ll be an angry little ghost who will find a way to text me. See ya!” Vicky waves to Pete on her way past him, and Patrick would like to _die_.

But first he takes cash out of the tip jar on the piano and pays for the shots of whiskey he grabs for himself, carrying them over to Pete’s table. “Hi,” he says.

“Hello,” Pete replies. “Are we staying after-hours?”

Patrick hesitates, halfway to sitting down. “If you want to.”

“If you’re saying we can talk for more than ten minutes at a time, yes, yes, I want to.”

Patrick smiles and finishes sitting.

Lauren says, “You’re staying?” as she passes by him.

“I paid for the drinks,” Patrick promises her.

“Don’t have sex in my bar,” she warns.

Patrick feels his face flame scarlet.

Lauren slides through the velvet curtains and the door swings shut behind her, leaving them alone in an empty bar, and Patrick looks aghast at Pete.

“Do you have a lot of sex in the bar?” Pete asks casually.

“No. Never. We are not having sex in this bar.”

“Ever, or tonight?”

Patrick tosses back a shot of whiskey.

Pete laughs.

Patrick tosses back the next shot.

“Easy there,” says Pete.

“You are way ahead of me, I’ve got to catch up.”

“I nursed, like, four hot toddies over five hours, or something. If you’re going to do shots like that, you’ve got to pour me some.”

“The whiskey was for courage.”

Pete lifts his eyebrows. “You need courage to sit and talk with me? We’ve been talking all night.”

Nerves – or the shots – make Patrick blunt. “You’re rich, and you’re hot, and you’re funny, what the fuck is your catch?”

Pete opens his mouth, closes it, then says, “I mean, I’m a nightmare, so that’s probably my catch.”

“A nightmare?” Patrick is dubious. Patrick’s met his share of nightmares. Pete’s very far off from nightmare.

“I’m, you know…” Pete takes a deep breath. “A little broken.”

Patrick is suddenly immensely regretful he started this line of conversation. Pete is clearly in earnest, and that breaks Patrick’s heart. _I’m sure you’re not_ , he starts to say, and then reconsiders. Because, actually, Pete probably _is_ a little broken. That was what living did to you, after all. “Who isn’t?” Patrick asks softly.

Pete looks across at him. The Christmas lights blink against his eyes, warm and steady. He has an extraordinary pair of eyes. Or maybe that’s a trick of the lights. Christmas magic, or something. “When did you play the bar near DePaul?” Pete asks suddenly, not a question Patrick expected.

“A few years ago.”

“I keep wondering if I heard you play.”

“You probably wouldn’t remember, even if you did. We’re not very memorable.”

“Now that’s not a nice way to talk about your band,” Pete chides him.

“Oh, it’s my fault we’re not memorable. I can’t, like, get the sound right. There’s something off about it. I keep fiddling and fiddling. Joe says I’m too much of a perfectionist and we’re fine but he’s wrong.”

“Joe?”

“Lead guitarist,” Patrick explains. “Also one of my best friends. We started the band together when we were in high school.”

“I bet you were adorable in your high school band.”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “I was a _disaster_. What were you, the quarterback?”

Pete laughs. “Soccer captain.”

“Fuck you,” Patrick says good-naturedly.

“But I was also in a band.”

“So you mentioned. What kind of band?”

“Emo.”

Patrick laughs. “Oh, of _course_.”

“Takes one to know one, sparky.”

“Uh-huh. What do you play?”

“Bass, very badly, but I was the lead singer.”

“Oh, you sing?”

“No, I scream. It was that kind of band.”

Patrick laughs again. “I can see that. Was your hair long then?”

Pete shakes his head. “Short. Spiky. At one point I had a pink stripe.”

“Ironically my hair _was_ long in high school. Well, longer. And I had these awful sideburns, they were horrible, I can’t believe someone didn’t hold me down and forcibly shave them off of me.”

It’s Pete’s turn to laugh. “I bet they were cute.”

“They were not cute, and everyone at my high school agreed with me and disagreed with you.”

“Well, that is shocking, your high school was full of a bunch of losers.”

“Truth,” Patrick agrees. “Do you still play in a band?”

Pete makes a little sound, like a skeptical scoff. “No.”

“But you still write lyrics,” Patrick guesses. “The poetry, right?”

“I mean.” Pete takes a deep breath. “I just write. I don’t know if they’re lyrics. I don’t know if they’re anything good.”

“That’s how I feel about my music.”

“We are a pair,” Pete remarks ruefully. “I’d love to hear your music.”

“I’d love to read your poetry,” Patrick counters.

Pete hesitates, then says, “Maybe.”

Patrick realizes his error: obviously personal poetry written in a diary somewhere is very different from music performed at public shows. “Sorry, I’m not forcing you to—”

“No.” Pete shakes his head a little. “It’s just…no one’s really cared about reading my poetry before.” He laughs this self-deprecating laugh Patrick hates, it’s so painfully different from the open-hearted braying laugh Pete’s had up until this point. “Even my bandmates used to complain when I showed up with new lyrics. I mean, they were right, my lyrics were always a bit much. _I’m_ always just a little bit too much.”

And Patrick can see that. After all, this guy found him through a national advertising campaign, this guy left him a thousand-dollar tip before he even knew his name, like, this guy is definitely the very definition of _too much_ , and Patrick would not have been able to imagine a scenario where he would have found the guy behind those actions charming, he’d been bewildered and a little sardonic about the unknown tipper prior to all of this – the point is, Pete is a lot of things that on paper Patrick would have said _hell no_ to, but in person Pete is irresistible.

Patrick doesn’t say, _Your bandmates sound like assholes_ , although he thinks it’s true. He says instead, “Well, I don’t know, my lyrics are pretty terrible, I might be able to use some new poetry. I’ll send you some songs and you can see what you think.” He says this as casually as possible, like it’s no big thing, even though Joe would say that Patrick offering himself to the critique of others is definitely a big thing.

Pete brightens out of his self-deprecating moment, which Patrick is pleased to see. He says, “I would love that, dude, thank you. I miss being around music.”

“You should come to a show,” Patrick says impulsively. “My band is way better than this shit.” Patrick waves his hand toward the piano.

“Patrick, I don’t know what you’re talking about, it would be virtually impossible to top Emo Christmas Hits.”

“I am going to write you a genuine emo Christmas song, just to shut you up.”

“Bring it. With sleigh bells.”

Patrick laughs. “You think I won’t do this, but I will.”

“Oh, I hope so. You know, if you can write yourself a hit Christmas song, it’s a goldmine. Every year you get to sit back and watch the royalties skyrocket.”

“I clearly have been focusing on entirely the wrong genre.”

“Christmas sells. Trust me. Nobody knows this better than me. It fucking _sells_.”

“My tips do go up in December,” Patrick agrees. “Some years more than others.”

Pete smiles. “So you play here all year?”

“Yeah.”

“And are all your playlists emo-themed?”

“Sometimes I break out some _Rocky Horror Picture Show_ to mix things up.”

“Shut up,” Pete says.

“I play a mean Frank N. Furter,” Patrick says, with no small amount of pride.

“Yeah, no, this I’ve got to see. Get your ass over to that piano, emo boy.”

“You like to give orders, huh?”

“Depends. Do you like that sort of thing?”

“Not usually.”

“Would you like to give me an order?” Pete gives him an arch, inviting look.

Patrick considers. “Hmm. I’ll play you one _Rocky Horror_ song if you’ll explain to me how I ended up the subject of a national advertising campaign.”

“Deal,” Pete says immediately.

So Patrick gets up and makes a show of stretching his arms and cracking his knuckles. When he sits down at the piano, he doesn’t look back over at Pete. He’ll never be able to get through Frank N. Furter if he’s watching Pete watch him do it.

He plays his way through _I Can Make You a Man_ , really belting it out and settling himself into the role, and when he’s done Pete applauds and whistles and it’s nice because honestly, usually, performing at the bar, he’s lucky if anyone even notices he exists. Applause for a piano-playing performance is a nice change of pace.

Feeling pink-cheeked, he rises from the piano bench and sends Pete a mock bow, before going back over to the table. “Okay,” he says as he sits. “Your turn. How did I end up the subject of a national advertising campaign?”

“By being you, my emo starburst.”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “That’s not an answer.”

“Of course it is. A CEO of a national corporation walked into this bar one night and there you were, being you, and this CEO – he couldn’t get you out of his head, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how ridiculous he might seem. He couldn’t stop thinking about _you_. And that’s how you ended up the subject of a national advertising campaign. By being so perfectly, irresistibly you. How’s that for an answer?”

“Um,” says Patrick, staring at him. “That really…wasn’t what I was expecting.”

Pete laughs drily. “That tends to be what I specialize in, apparently.”

“Nothing about this has been anything that I would have expected,” Patrick admits.

“Good or bad?” asks Pete.

“Good,” Patrick says. “Do you really have to ask? Very good.”

Pete smiles, not self-deprecating. Soft and genuine. He says, “I expected you to have enough of me after five minutes, so this is much better than I was expecting. And I definitely wasn’t expecting bonus _Rocky Horror_ two weeks before Christmas.”

“Why do you do that?” Patrick asks suddenly.

“Do what?”

“Continually think that I shouldn’t be here with you? That I should have walked away? Why?”

Pete is silent for a moment. Then he lifts one shoulder in a shrug, says with a forced casualness, “People usually do. I guess it’s best to just…anticipate it.”

“You really _do_ know a lot of assholes,” Patrick says.

Pete startles him by laughing, that braying just-this-side-of-ridiculous laugh. It’s such a fucking infectious laugh. “God, truer words. Lots of assholes. Including my marketing director. She’s who you really have to blame, you know. She slid you into the Christmas marketing scheme and I didn’t notice.”

“She hid it from you?”

“No, to be fair to her, I never looked at the proposal. I hate Christmas.”

“Isn’t Christmas, like, your life?”

“Yeah. You’d hate Christmas if it was your life, too.”

“Fair enough,” Patrick decides.

“What’s your deal? Why were you playing the Christmas Eve shift?”

“Child of divorce,” Patrick says. “After a while it got easier to pretend I had important plans elsewhere than to juggle the guilt and recriminations for any choice I might make about Christmas involving my parents.”

“That never works for me,” Pete muses.

“What doesn’t?”

“Pretending I have important plans elsewhere. Somehow I always end up on a private plane heading to Vermont for the annual Wentz Family Christmas Gala.”

“That sounds like a perfectly ordinary thing to do,” says Patrick.

“Yeah, when I wake up in the morning Jay Gatsby is floating dead in the pool.” There’s a moment of silence before Pete says, “That was a _Great Gatsby_ joke.”

“Dude, you make _Great Gatsby_ jokes, for that alone I’m glad I’ve stuck around to hang out.”

Pete laughs again.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look! Look! At the amazing cover carbonbased made for this fic!!!!

“I mean,” says Pete, “if I had to choose, I think it would be _Star Wars_.”

Patrick shakes his head. “That’s the wrong choice.”

“I can’t make the wrong choice! It’s _my_ choice what movie I want to watch for the rest of my life!” Pete protests.

“The right choice is _Ghostbusters_.”

“The original or the remake?”

“That’s why this is the right choice: I get both.”

“Well, if you get both, then I get nine movies. And _Rogue One_ , too.”

Patrick snorts. “You get three good movies and six terrible ones, that’s not the genius move you think it is, Wentz.”

“I get three _spectacular_ movies. And _Rogue One_ is good, you didn’t even count _Rogue One_!”

“We had better never get stuck on a desert island together. Your musical artist choice was terrible—”

“I cannot believe you are going to quarrel with Guns ‘n’ Roses—”

“David Bowie is sitting _right there_. How can you not go with—” Next to them on the table, Patrick’s phone makes a tragic sound of impending death, and Patrick looks at it in surprise, and then his eyes widen. “Oh, fuck.”

“What?” Pete asks, alarmed. “Did something happen?”

“It’s four a.m.”

“Oh. Is that a bad thing?”

“I have to work. Not this job. My real job. The job that actually pays my bills.”

“What’s your real job?” Pete asks curiously.

“I work in a record store.”

Pete regards Patrick with undisguised joy. Patrick is _so great_. “Of _course_ you do.”

Patrick gives him a look. He has this look where he’s pretending to be unamused, but it’s not at all true and Pete loves this look a lot, it’s already his favorite look of Patrick’s. He says, “Okay, I prefer to be nocturnal but I should probably get home and get at least a couple of hours’ sleep before I have to open the store. Hurry up and give me your number before it dies.” Patrick thrusts his phone at Pete. 

“Let me walk you home,” Pete suggests, following Patrick’s lead and standing as he texts himself from Patrick’s phone.

Patrick’s walking over to the piano, grabbing a coat off a hook in a corner that Pete hadn’t noticed before. He says, “That is sweet of you but it’s not walkable. I’ll hop on the L.”

Pete follows Patrick out of the bar, watches him lock up. It’s frigid outside, and eerily quiet, the sounds of the city sounding hushed and distanced, even though it’s all around them. He’s reluctant for this night to be over. He offers, “I can get you an Uber.”

Patrick finishes locking up and turns to look at Pete. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he says.

Pete braces himself. “Okay,” he agrees cautiously.

“Don’t throw money around at me. The thousand-dollar tip was cute and all, but I don’t want that every date. I don’t want you to think every date has to be you spending money on me.”

“Patrick, you drank hot water all night. You’re the cheapest date in the history of time. I didn’t even pay for your shots at the end. I was only offering an Uber.” Pete can’t help that he sounds defensive and irritated.

Patrick huffs out a breath. It drifts into a puff of white fog around him. He says, “No, I know. You’re right. Sorry, I can be…a little sensitive about money things. Child of divorce, you know? A lot of money-equals-love shit went on.”

“Money doesn’t equal love,” Pete says somberly, because he knows that very well.

“No, it doesn’t,” Patrick agrees.

“I have to take an Uber because I am very cold. We could split if you want,” Pete offers.

“Yeah, of course you’re cold, you don’t have a coat.” Patrick sounds amused.

“Coats are for suckers,” Pete says.

“Tell yourself that after you catch pneumonia,” Patrick says, and he does look nice and cozy (and smug) in his coat with its turned-up collar. His nose is just the perfect shade of pink. And then he says, “I can’t invite you back to my place.”

Pete, his phone in his hand, opening the Uber app, freezes, then looks up. “Do you want me to invite you back to mine?” he asks slowly. He wasn’t sure, after a lecture about not throwing money around, if taking Patrick back to his fucking lakeview penthouse was a good idea.

Patrick shakes his head thoughtfully. “No. I want you to call me tomorrow and ask me out on another date.”

“I can do that,” Pete says. “I can do that so hard.”

Patrick smiles at him. Patrick has a smile like a bright-eyed cherub. Angels we have heard on high, thinks Pete nonsensically. Patrick says, shy and sweet, “I’ve had a really good time.”

Pete feels like they’re in high school or something and…he likes it. “Me, too.”

“I like you much more than I wanted to, Pete Wentz,” Patrick continues.

“You are a sweet talker,” Pete informs him.

Patrick leans forward, closing the distance between them. “Hey, only one of us can be a poet.”

Patrick is the perfect height, Pete thinks. It’s really nice. “Care to share some of the heat of that coat?” he asks, and tucks his freezing hands under its hem, pressing them against Patrick’s shirt, which isn’t thick enough to hide how icy they are.

Patrick yelps. “Jesus. You need a _coat_.”

“Gloves,” Pete says vaguely, more focused on Patrick’s mouth. “Gloves would be good.”

“You know, I thought you were going to be taller,” Patrick remarks.

Pete says, “I’m going to kiss you now.”

“Please do,” Patrick says primly.

Their first kiss was heated and desperate, but this kiss is sweet and slow and aching. It might be the best kiss of Pete’s entire life. He presses his forehead against Patrick’s and breathes hard and tries to remember if he’s ever had a kiss leave him so buzzed, like static electricity all over his body, just a thrumming little alertness, a million ears pricking up to see the start of something new. _This_ , Pete thinks. _This could be something_.

They stand, wrapped together, so close their breaths mingle into the same cloud around them, trading soft, melting kisses back and forth, until Patrick says shakily, “I think my phone is totally dead now, so I think you _do_ have to call me that Uber.”

Pete smiles at him. He steps back to open the app. He orders Patrick an Uber and tucks him into it.

“Fucking get home and take a hot shower as fast as you can,” Patrick grumbles at him from the back of the car.

“Your concern is so sweet,” Pete grins at him, and grins more when Patrick rolls his eyes.

When Pete finally does get home, he feels physically frozen to the core, but emotionally he’s burning so bright and hot that it feels like having a fever. He collapses onto his couch and says to his ceiling, “Fuck, what just happened?” but he’s laughing as he asks it. Not because anything is funny, but because he’s _happy_. His laugh is pure joy.

He thaws himself out in a hot shower like Patrick requested, and then he sends a selfie of himself, scrubbed pink, hair curling with the damp humidity, head on his pillow. He sends it to Patrick with the text _Took a hot shower, emo boy_. Then he falls asleep surrounded by an almost audible soundtrack of triumph, like, that’s the _Hallelujah Chrorus_ Pete hears in the distance.

In the morning there’s a text from Patrick, a selfie of him sleepy, with outrageous bedhead, looking like he just got done yawning. The accompanying text reads, _Not emo_.

 _Emo starburst_ , Pete replies fondly, and goes to work with a smile on his face.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think you all should know: My current draft of this fic is 40,000 words long. And I feel like the ending is still not that close. Idk, maybe 10,000 more words? But also maybe more. I am frantically trying to finish in time for Christmas, but also it might not be until January so maybe this fic will keep all of us company through all twelve days of Christmas, IT'S AN ADVENTURE.

Patrick is halfway through his shift at the record store and _not_ thinking about Pete Wentz when Vicky calls him.

He answers because that’s exactly how bored he is at work, he’d rather be interrogated about his (really excellent) date last night.

“Yo,” he says by way of greeting.

Vicky responds in a sing-song, “He sent you flowers.”

Patrick didn’t expect this. “He what?”

“Not anything too extravagant. Daisies. Very bright and cheerful. And a single dark maroon chrysanthemum. I looked it up and in the secret language of flowers it means ‘I would like to fuck you through the mattress.’”

“Oh, my _God_ , Vicky,” Patrick says, horrified.

Vicky laughs hysterically.

“That’s not funny,” Patrick complains.

“Do you want me to read the card for you?” Vicky asks, still chuckling.

“Definitely do not read the card,” Patrick commands.

“Oooh, do you think it’s dirty?”

“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response,” Patrick says, channeling the Queen of England in tone.

“Seriously, it went well last night? I mean, obviously it did.”

Patrick is silent. Which is silly. Hasn’t he been thinking all day about how well it went last night? “He’s nice,” Patrick says finally. “He’s cute and he’s funny and he’s nice.”

“Awww,” Vicky says. “ _Patrick_.”

“Stop it,” Patrick commands grumpily. Because this is how it always starts, isn’t it? And he knows how it always ends. “He’s a nice guy, it’s not—He’s a nice guy.”

“Good. Nice guys are not always your specialty.”

Patrick frowns. “That’s not true.” He considers. “Is it?”

Vicky hmms at him, then says, “Anyway. This is the first one to my knowledge who’s sent you flowers.”

“He’s also the first kajillionaire,” Patrick replies archly. “He probably sends flowers to all his dates. This is probably his set-piece.”

“Daisies with a single dark chrysanthemum is his standard bouquet of flowers? Interesting guy.”

Patrick doesn’t like to think about how that bouquet seems tailored specifically to him. _Emo starburst_ , he thinks. Bright, cheerful daisies with a glimmer of emo peeking through. It doesn’t sound like a set piece…unless Pete’s type is emo starbursts. Patrick tries to imagine Pete calling someone else his emo starburst. The very idea of it hurts. How can he be this far gone after a single night?

“So I take it you’re going out with him again?” Vicky is saying.

“Probably,” Patrick hedges.

Vicky bursts out laughing. “You are not fooling anyone, Patrick Stump. Call your hot kajillionaire and tell him you’re in for whatever comes next.”

***

Pete is in the middle of a meeting about _next_ Christmas’s sales. Because they literally start planning next Christmas before they even get done with this Christmas. It’s some kind of purchasing report about some new line of miniature snowmen they want to sell, full of options.

_Customization boondoggle_ , is the heading on the PowerPoint slide Pete’s looking at, at the moment that his phone lights up with a text. From Patrick.

Pete smiles and swipes the phone open.

_You sent flowers to the bar?_

_No way_ , Pete replies. _Do you have some other secret admirer and do I have to fight a duel with him?_ He adds three sword emoji.

_Hilarious_ , is Patrick’s next text.

_I don’t know your address, it was my only option for getting flowers to reach you_ , Pete explains.

_I get why you sent them to the bar but flowers weren’t necessary._

Pete is indignant on Patrick’s behalf. _Dude. You definitely send flowers after you kiss a nice boy who’s worried you might die of frostbite._

There’s a gap then. Long enough that Pete sneaks a glance back up at the meeting. They’re demonstrating the snowmen now. Everyone else is rapt. Pete goes back to his phone in time for Patrick’s next text.

_I take it you still have all your fingers?_

Pete smiles and texts back, _So far._ And then he wonders about the flowers, can’t help but text, _Are the flowers nice?_ Because, like, did Patrick like the flowers? Or were they too much?

_I haven’t seen them yet_ , comes the reply. _I’m not at the bar. Vicky says they’re nice. Daisies and a maroon chrysanthemum?_

_Emo starburst_ , Pete replies. He adds some starburst emoji.

_What’s the card say?_ Patrick asks.

Pete bites down on his smug thrill of amusement. Christ, he hopes Patrick likes the card. _Gotta read it for yourself_ , he sends. And then he types out slowly: _I could go for a pizza Thursday night_. He reads it over. It’s stupid he’s nervous about this. Patrick is flirting with him right this very moment, and Patrick requested that Pete ask him out again. Pete glances up at the meeting, which seems to be wrapping up. The snowmen have been put away and the PowerPoint slide reads _Questions?_ in the company’s proprietary blinking snowflake font. Pete takes a deep breath and sends the text.

_Before my shift at the bar_ , is the answer, blessedly quick in coming.

_Perfect_ , Pete replies, smiling sappily at his phone.

***

It’s not perfect Thursday afternoon when Dora says, “You’ve got to go.”

“What?” Pete is incredulous. “No, I don’t. What?”

“They are big-deal investors,” Dora explains to him patiently.

“No, I know, I get that, but I can’t drop everything to meet them for a drink. I’ve got plans.”

“Do you have plans with other investors?” Dora asks.

“No. I have plans with someone who is not in any way an investor.”

“Then those are not important plans. Reschedule them,” Dora clips out.

“No. Dora. This is ridiculous. I can’t just say ‘how high’ every time these people command me to ‘jump.’”

“Actually, that is exactly your job description. This is what you signed up for. And this is what you’re good at. You know that. This is what you bring to the table. You schmooze. This is what we need you to do. And, if you don’t go, next week these people will be at your parents’ house in Vermont for the Christmas celebrations and they’ll be talking about how you were too good to join them for a cocktail.”

Goddammit, thinks Pete in despair. Dora is right, this is the only real talent he brings to the table for this company. “It’s not that I’m too good for them, it’s that—”

“That you have better things to do with your time,” Dora finishes for him.

Pete sighs. “I really hate you, you know.”

“I would not be doing my job correctly if you didn’t hate me. Tonight, six pm.”

“One drink!” Pete calls after her as she leaves his office. “I’m only doing one drink!”

“Good enough,” she calls back.

Pete looks at Bebe, who’s looking at him curiously. “What? It really is her job to tell me who I have to suck up to.”

“No, I know.”

“You think I should stand up to her more?”

“No. I don’t want to lose my job, so I think you should suck up to whoever you’re told you have to suck up to, and I appreciate your sacrifice for my continued ability to afford my lifestyle.”

“Well, you’re welcome,” Pete says shortly. He’s not really in the mood at the moment. He’s trying to think how to construct a text to Patrick explaining all of this that doesn’t sound like he’s blowing off the date.

“You have plans?” Bebe asks.

“Huh?” Pete says, distracted.

“You have plans tonight?”

Pete hesitates. He looks at Bebe’s intrigued expression. The last time he was honest with Bebe about his personal life, he ended up the subject of a national marketing campaign. So he lies. “No. I made that up to try to get out of going.”

“Hmm,” says Bebe, and Pete’s not sure he’s convinced her.

“Isn’t it our busiest time of year?” Pete asks her pointedly.

“Yes.”

“Then I bet you can find something to do,” he suggests.

She grins at him and says, “Okay, fine, fair point,” and leaves his office.

Pete sighs and looks hard at his phone. “Fuck,” he says out loud.


	13. Chapter 13

_Had a stupid work thing come up. I’ll swing by the bar later. SORRY._ ☹ ☹ ☹

Patrick thrusts the phone into Vicky’s face and says, “What do you think it _means_?”

Vicky reads the text. “It means he had a work thing come up. He’ll swing by the bar later.”

“It was supposed to be a date,” Patrick sulks. “A real date. I was kind of looking forward to it. And then this happened, and I’m kind of like, why would he jerk me around like this?”

“He had a work thing come up, Patrick. He’s the CEO of a major company. I bet work things come up.”

“Oh, please, CEOs don’t _work_ , they’re a drain on society and should cut their salaries to cease perpetuating the dramatic income inequality our country is suffering from.”

“Did you talk about this on your first date, because I bet I know why he’s blowing you off,” remarks Vicky.

Patrick glares at her. “Of course I didn’t say that stuff on our date, I’m not an idiot, but like, it is a thing I think, and this is probably all an indication that I should just stop all this now.”

“Patrick, yesterday you read his card and you blushed and were in a good mood the rest of the night.”

Patrick is appalled. “No, I wasn’t!”

Vicky gives him a look. “You played _Joy to the World_. Like, happily. A happy _Joy to the World_.”

“Sometimes I play happy things,” Patrick tries to defend himself.

“You played it twice.”

He had played it twice. He couldn’t help it. Pete’s note had read:

_Chasing the direction you went_   
_You’re a bottled starburst  
The planets align, you’re just like Mars, you shine in the sky_

That was fucking poetry. Pete had sent him a tiny bit of his poetry. Poetry about _him_. Like, what the hell was anyone supposed to do in the face of goddamn poetry? Of course he’d played _Joy to the World_ , happily, twice.

“Look, you have no reason to believe he’s lying to you about this work thing,” Vicky points out logically.

“I also have no reason to believe this won’t be a constant pattern and I’ll always be moping around waiting for him to show up because I’m the second priority.”

“You know,” remarks Vicky, “I seem to recall certain other people complaining about being the second priority in someone’s life. Namely, previous significant others complaining about being second priority in your life. Namely, because of music.”

“Yes, Vicky,” snaps Patrick. “I remember my own romantic history, thank you.”

“I’m just saying, like, do you like this guy better than music?”

“No,” Patrick says automatically, “I don’t like anything better than music.”

Vicky has the nerve to look dubious about this, like Patrick isn’t telling the truth.

“Did I tell you he picked Guns ‘n’ Roses as his desert island music?” Patrick insists.

“Like seventeen times, Patrick. That is not the dealbreaker you think it is. Not even to you, apparently.”

“I’m going to go play my piano,” Patrick announces.

“Please do. I bet it’s going to be a super upbeat night.”

Patrick scowls at her.

***

Patrick hates the fact that he feels the exact moment Pete comes into the bar, because he shouldn’t have some kind of second sense for him, but his head is all caught up in this mythology of Peteness, this fanciful notion that Pete’s gaze feels different, the same way he managed at some point to convince himself that Pete says his name differently, some new unique way no one has ever in the history of time called him _Patrick_. This is all in Patrick’s addled head, of course. In reality, Pete’s gaze is not special and he doesn’t say Patrick’s name in some especially nice way.

Still. Patrick knows the instant Pete walks into the bar. Of course, he also causes a little bit of a commotion, because he walks in holding a pizza box, and you’re not supposed to bring outside food into the bar, and there’s a little bit of a kerfuffle with Lauren that Vicky scurries out from behind the bar to referee.

Pete gets in with the pizza, because of course he does, and glances toward Patrick at the piano.

Patrick glares and stops playing right in the middle of the song. “Time for a break,” he snarls into the microphone, and then stalks over to where Pete is slipping out of his overcoat.

A _coat_. And he’s dressed in a dark gray suit that fits him like a glove, his hair slicked back into a neat ponytail. It occurs to Patrick that Pete either came fresh from the real live work event he had come up or he’s carrying the charade a bit far.

“You’re angry,” Pete concludes ruefully, snagging a finger into the knot of the pale peach tie he’s wearing, loosening it and undoing the first couple of buttons of his shirt collar.

It is, frankly, pornographic. Patrick can do nothing but stare at the expanse of throat Pete has revealed. Which is nothing he hasn’t already seen but somehow the fact that Pete has just revealed it makes it seem obscene. Like, that’s a bit of Pete he didn’t show to the people he just spent the evening with, that’s a bit of Pete for Patrick.

Patrick sucks in a breath and shifts his gaze to look at Pete’s eyes, glowing golden in the blinking Christmas lights. He says, “What?” helplessly distracted.

“I’m sorry,” Pete says. “I’m really, really sorry. I know this is a terrible foot to start off on. I brought pizza, if that helps. I thought it would be charming. I’m second-guessing myself now. Is it charming? Or obnoxious?”

“How’d you get Lauren to let you in here with it?” Patrick asks.

“I told her it might inspire you to stop playing _Christmas with the Devil_.”

Something about Pete instantly recognizing the song he was playing makes Patrick want to kiss him senseless, shove him up against the wall and muss up his hair and wrinkle that suit and quiz him, singing breathless snatches of melody to Pete and seeing how much music he could make Pete forget in favor of Patrick’s name. Like, it’s a very specific fantasy.

_Fuck_ , thinks Patrick.

“Charming,” he says thickly. “It’s charming.”

Pete smiles at him, wide and relieved, like he really was genuinely worried Patrick might turn him away.

_Fuck fuck fuck_ , Patrick thinks, he literally just met this man, why is he so defenseless when it comes to him?

Patrick says grudgingly, “Okay, fine, no more Spinal Tap. Any requests?”

Pete purses his lips, answers thoughtfully, “Twisted Sister.”

And Patrick laughs.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. I'm having a tough time right now. My mother tested positive for covid (schools are super-safe, everyone! keep the teachers in the classrooms!). She is so far asymptomatic, which is very, very, very good. However, we're all supposed to be staying isolated for the next ten days. We weren't having our usual Christmas, of course, but I at least thought we would be able to exchange gifts within our household. Now we're going to spend Christmas isolated in different rooms unable to even do that. We're very lucky, I know, and I hope we stay very lucky, but I'm not feeling a whole lot of Christmas cheer right now. Please think good thoughts that she stays asymptomatic and that none of the rest of us catch it and, Idk, that at some point I feel less like crying all the time.
> 
> And thank you for all the comments on the last chapter, I couldn't wrap my mind around responding to them right now, I'm sorry.

“Hey,” Patrick says suddenly, in the quiet of the closed bar, when they’ve demolished the pizza between them and reached the end of a meandering discussion about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “Do you want to get out of here?”

Pete wonders if this is a proposition. If this is a proposition, Pete is wildly in favor of it. “Yes,” he says.

“Do you want to go to a show?” Patrick asks.

Pete hasn’t been to a show in years, around the time he grew out of his rebellion and found himself in service of the very company he’d been rebelling against. He suddenly wants to go to a show so badly he _aches_ with it.

He’s also dressed in fucking Brooks Brothers. “How am I going to a show like this?”

“You’re with me,” Patrick says mildly, standing. “I’ll get you in. I’ve got cred.”

“You? My little emo starburst?” Pete can’t help that he teases him because when he teases Patrick blushes and it’s enchanting.

“Shut up,” Patrick says, which is usually what Patrick says when Pete makes him blush. “Do you want to go to the show or don’t you? Because I’m your ticket in and you should be nice to me.”

“I am prepared to be very, very nice to you,” Pete purrs, settling his chin on his fist. “How nice would you like me to be?”

“Hmm,” Patrick considers. He’s got kaleidoscope eyes, color-changing depending on what they’re reflecting, and they rove over Pete thoughtfully. “Not _too_ nice,” he decides, and then reaches out to trace a finger over the dangling end of Pete’s tie. “This is the most fucking distracting thing I’ve ever seen,” he breathes.

“Sparky, if ties are your thing, we can make that work,” Pete says hoarsely.

Patrick looks at him and smiles, this flickering smile that’s all heat and promise, and then he says, “Let me show you a good time, Wentz.”

This is how Pete finds himself squeezed into the corner of a too-hot room, sweating through his layers of Brooks Brothers, damp from beer being spilled on him from every angle. The band is good, the crowd is electric, and Patrick is pressed close up against him, at first from necessity, and then from intent, Pete backed against the wall and Patrick deliberate as he leans his body into Pete’s.

Patrick’s eyes are hot and hypnotic and Patrick’s hands cage Pete in and when Patrick kisses him, it’s slow and wet and absolutely filthy, like Patrick’s making up his mind about something and Pete is a huge supporter of whatever he’s decided, like, he’s Patrick’s decision’s number one fan. The first time they kissed like this, Pete kissed Patrick, Patrick backed against the wall, but now it’s Patrick kissing Pete, and it is magnificent, it is mindlessly good, it is grinding up against him in public worried he’s about to come in his pants, like, that kind of good.

Patrick’s hands close over Pete’s hips, still them, and Pete hears the whine this pulls out of him.

“Listen to me,” Patrick says in his ear, his voice low but pitched under the band, so Pete can hear him perfectly, it’s like Patrick’s voice is inside his head.

“I am listening to you so hard,” Pete promises, his hips twitching against Patrick’s hold.

Patrick chuckles, low and dark, and Pete shudders with desire. Patrick says, “I’ve got a show tomorrow night. My band, I mean.”

“Okay,” Pete agrees, because he’s not sure why they’re not talking about sex right now.

“I want you to come. I’ll text you the details.”

“Of course I’ll come,” Pete promises. “I can’t wait. Speaking of coming—”

“I am going to walk away from you now,” Patrick says.

Pete can’t make this make sense. “What?”

“I am going to walk away and I am going to leave you here. Tomorrow night you’re going to come to my show. And after the show you’re going to take me back to your place and fuck my brains out.”

“Jesus,” Pete whispers. His dick is extraordinarily invested in Patrick’s view of the future.

Patrick chuckles again. Pete is pretty sure that that sound is illegal in conservative states, definitely. Patrick presses a hand blatantly against Pete’s erection, and okay, that is definitely illegal in conservative states, absolutely. “Tomorrow,” Patrick breathes against Pete’s ear. “Tomorrow I will make you come so hard you’ll see stars. Talk about a starburst.”

And then, just like that, with one hot-as-hell smile, Patrick steps back and melts into the crowd, leaving Pete sweaty and hot and very, very bothered.

“Christ,” Pete whispers, and bangs his head against the back of the wall to try to distract his dick from how hot Patrick is.

It doesn’t really work.

***

Pete is smitten.

Like, he is seriously hardcore smitten.

And that isn’t just because of Patrick’s sexual withholding stunt, genius as it might have been. No, Pete was smitten before that. Pete was smitten a year ago, if he’s being honest, drawn in by that midnight-clear voice singing determinedly emo Christmas music while surrounded by good cheer. Yeah, Pete was smitten then, but it crashes over Pete on Friday morning, bleary-eyed from his very good night out, looking at himself in the mirror. He smiles at his reflection, wide and joyful, and tells himself, “You are fucking _smitten_.”

He doesn’t jerk off in the shower, like, this is a point of honor, his entire day is just going to be full of the promise of Patrick, who texts him the details of the show during Pete’s first very boring meeting of the day.

Pete smiles and texts back, _I feel that I should honestly tell you I am smitten_.

Patrick replies, _Nobody uses the word smitten._

Pete bites back his laugh. _Totally smitten_.

So Pete is fucking floating, and it’s Bebe who brings him back to Earth.

“This is Patrick, isn’t it?”

Pete looks up from his phone in alarm. It’s just him and Bebe in his office, and he honestly can’t even remember if this was a scheduled thing or if Bebe just dropped by. “What?” he hedges, and hides his phone. It doesn’t really matter – he wasn’t currently texting Patrick, he just…likes to look at the conversation they’re having, _what_ , sue him, he’s _smitten_.

“This…” Bebe gestures vaguely around him. “Whole thing.”

Pete frowns. “What whole thing?”

“You’re _happy_. And you are not happy because you had that drink with those investors last night, like, that’s not what put you in this good mood. You had plans you didn’t want to cancel. I’m guessing you didn’t actually cancel them. And the other day you were grinning like a Cheshire cat in the meeting about the customizable snowmen, and that was not because you care about customizable snowmen. You hate this time of year. You told me you did, and I’ve checked with everyone. You hate it and usually you lock yourself in your office, sulky and working around the clock. And last night, the week before Christmas, you had _plans_ , out in the land of holly and ivy. This is Patrick. You contacted him, and he’s making you this happy.”

Pete sits, silent, and tries to think of the least revealing thing to say. This whole thing started with a very public detailing of Pete’s love life, but that is not how Pete wants to go on. He _is_ happy, and he doesn’t want to share that with this public Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III person whose job is a drag.

Bebe folds her arms and regards him with a lifted eyebrow and says, “What do you think I’m going to say?”

“That the public has voted on where I’m supposed to be taking Patrick on dates,” Pete replies grimly.

Bebe rolls her eyes. “No, you idiot, I’m going to say that I told you so and also I expect the hugest bonus of all time for what I have accomplished. Fuck the sales numbers, I brought you Christmas magic!” Bebe does indeed like triumphant.

Pete makes a face. “You didn’t bring me Christmas magic.”

“Didn’t I? Look at you, with your Christmas romance that you definitely have me to thank for.”

“It isn’t a Christmas romance.”

“Christmas is next week.”

“Yeah, but we don’t do stupid things like kiss under the mistletoe.”

Bebe laughs at him. “Okay, that I believe. Still. I think a ‘thank you, Bebe, for your brilliant marketing campaign that brought me the love of my life’ is in order.”

“You’re getting a little bit ahead of yourself,” Pete tells her.

Bebe just smiles at him. “You don’t see the look on your face every time he texts you.”

Yeah, Pete has no doubt he’s transparent. He’s always worn his heart on his sleeve. And that’s always gotten him into trouble. He thinks of how he texted Patrick that he’s smitten and wonders if that was a mistake like all of his decisions are usually mistakes.

Bebe says, “Anyway, you’re welcome, you can name your first child after me.”

“I bet you have work to do,” Pete remarks, “it’s our busy season.”

Bebe winks at him and leaves him alone in his office.

To fret over whether he’s fucking things up with Patrick. He texts Patrick, _If that smitten thing was too much, let me take it back and we can pretend it never happened._

Patrick’s text, when it comes a little while later, reads, _Fuck you, I’ve already crossed ‘being smitten with’ off my life goals bingo card_.

And that makes Pete feel better. Patrick is the best. Pete is really very, very smitten. He texts back, _I crossed off ‘getting felt up in a suit at a hardcore show,’_ with a couple of devil emojis for emphasis.

Patrick texts back, _I aim to please_ , and Pete smiles all afternoon.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for all of the kind words yesterday. I was feeling very emotionally overwhelmed yesterday. I know all of us have been living this life where we're like "is that a sore throat? why do I have this headache? am I tired because of Covid or because of THE ENTIRE PLANET BEING EXHAUSTING RIGHT NOW?" but it somehow becomes a thousand times worse when they say to you, "You have been exposed, at any moment in the next twenty days a terrible thing may occur. Happy Holidays!" (I literally had someone from the Department of Health say "Merry Christmas" to me at the end of a call detailing a bunch of terrors to look out for, and I know he said it automatically and without thinking, but I really think their script should say, "Do *not* tell people you have just told may have infected their 88-year-old grandmother with a deadly virus to have a nice holiday.") And I think this whole weird Christmas season I've been thinking, "It doesn't matter that we won't get to see anyone and we can't go to any parties and we're missing Christmas Vigil Mass, because we're all safe and healthy and that's what matters." And all of a sudden I had to be like, ARE WE EVEN SAFE AND HEALTHY, which then meant what was the point of my dull Christmas season if we were all just going to get sick anyway. (I know all of the logical reasons why this is an absurd thing to think, but let me tell you, you can't logic yourself out of the way your head feels in this situation.)
> 
> ANYWAY. My mother, since testing positive, has been sent for a bunch of follow-up tests, all three of which have come back negative. Apparently, this seems to mean (nobody actually *knows,* for every question I ask I get three or four or five different answers) that her viral loads are low, either because her infection is not very severe (apparently this is more common when both the infector and infectee were wearing masks, as my mother and the student were) or because her infection is actually old and on its way out and we are wrong about when her exposure was. We think we're pretty sure we're not wrong about when her exposure occurred, because we don't go anywhere; her biggest risk is the classroom, and we know she had a student in her class who tested positive recently. Either way, hopefully the negative tests are a good sign. Also, my mother contacted the school nurse, who has much more detailed information on the student than the Department of Health, and also asked more detailed questions about my mother's interactions with the student. The nurse is pretty sure that my mother's exposure date was last Wednesday, which would make this Day 8 post-exposure. The vast majority of people develop symptoms by Day 7 post-exposure, so hopefully that is also a good thing. Of course, that doesn't mean much for me or the rest of my household, since our exposure is basically constant and ongoing, but maybe I can shuffle around the plates of things I'm worrying about a little bit. If my mother's on Day 8 post-exposure, then instead of having a full week of freaking out about her in front of me, I only have two days left to freak out, with diminishing odds. (We're going to follow the rules and pretend she could develop symptoms until New Year's, but this timeline is comforting to me.)
> 
> In the meantime, my great-uncle (my mother's godfather and also my sister's godfather) was exposed to Covid on Saturday and is now in the hospital non-responsive. :-( So yes, it could be so much worse and we are very lucky so far and hopefully we stay lucky through this three-week Sword of Damocles period. 
> 
> Those of you struggling through this time of year, either because it's always a rough slog or because of this year's circumstances, I'm sorry. I know none of us actually want socially distanced hugs anymore, but hopefully they are better than nothing, because they are coming your way. 
> 
> I keep thinking how this weird Christmas is the opposite of the story we tell ourselves about Christmas. What we tell ourselves is Christmas isn't about the things, the mad dash of presents, the dazzle of the lights. What we tells ourselves is Christmas is about each other, about joining together in song, about feeling less alone in the midwinter night. What this virus has done is deprived us of that, that true essential heart of Christmas. All we have left is the mad dash of presents we keep trying to shove at each other. The Grinch should have left the presents and taken away the Whos' town square gathering. That's how you steal Christmas. 
> 
> Oops, depressing note to end on. Sorry. Have some fluff. I hope, if the days to come aren't merry and bright, they at least aren't unbearable. You are not alone in the midwinter night. I promise.

Patrick’s entire day is a blur of happy anticipation, a buzzing thrum under his skin. Show days always feel different, the approach of the performance looming large, but Patrick’s keyed up entirely because of Pete and he knows it. His skin feels like it’s been stroked by static electricity, like he can still feel it sparking through him. He feels reckless and spontaneous, indulgently letting himself slip into the distraction of Pete. At what point does a distraction become so central that it’s no longer a distraction, it’s just…the central preoccupation of your mind? Because that’s the point Patrick has reached with Pete, and he feels silly and foolish but also startlingly lighthearted. There’s a busker crooning a soft _Silent Night_ as Patrick exits the L, and it’s so beautiful he almost feels teary-eyed. Fuck, is this how other people feel at Christmastime, all this good cheer, fondness for the thronging crowds with their ringing laughter, stepping gaily through the cold and dark winter’s night like it doesn’t even exist all around them because there are a few twinkling lights on a few trees?

What is _wrong_ with him?

It’s possible – highly possible – probable, in fact – that the problem with him is that he’s in love.

Patrick has never been in love with a person before. He knows this. He’s had crushes, sure. He’s enjoyed people’s company. He’s liked people. He’s never been in love. Whatever relationships he’s ever had, he’s always been able to be practical about them, compartmentalized. It’s always been nice to have a warm body around when he wanted it, and equally nice to spend most of his time lost in his music. He knows this is how he’s treated relationships, he knows that every complaint anyone has ever had about him as a boyfriend has been a hundred percent true. So this is how he knows he’s never been in love. That overpowering, all-consuming emotion all the songs are about? Yeah, that’s not Patrick Stump, unless you mean his relationship with the music that lives inside his head.

So it’s startling to find himself, suddenly, abruptly, after years of zero indication that he would ever be inclined to feel passionately about another human being, to find his mind changed after a scant couple of dates, and changed by _Pete Wentz_ , like, he was supposed to be a laughable, semi-pathetic joke. And instead he’s…

Patrick thinks of him outside the bar in the wee hours of the morning, freezing hands against Patrick’s skin, smiling into soft, sweet kisses. Patrick thinks of him in the close, humid heat of the punk show, disheveled in his suit, kissing him hard and hot and gasping.

Fuck, Patrick is in real, serious trouble.

He says this to Joe. “I am in real, serious trouble.”

Joe snorts. They’re setting up before the show. Joe is tuning his guitar. “Sure you are, boy scout,” he replies. “What’d you do, donate all the money from the lemonade stand to a starving puppy?”

“Yo, Trick!” someone calls to him. “Do you want to make sure you’re happy with how these drums are set up?”

“I’m sure they’re fine,” Patrick calls back, hopelessly distracted. He cannot focus on his _drums_ right now.

“Oh, fuck,” Joe says, and Patrick looks at him. He’s staring at Patrick in alarm. “Wait, you really mean it, you _are_ in serious trouble. Did you accidentally kill someone?”

Patrick blinks. “What?”

“Well, I don’t think you’d _purposely_ kill someone but you do have a temper.” Joe shrugs.

“I didn’t kill anyone,” Patrick says, exasperated. “I think I’m in love.”

Joe cocks his head. “With…a human?”

“See, that is a fair question, and that is why I am in trouble,” Patrick concludes in anguish.

“I just didn’t even know you were dating anyone. Who’s the lucky person?”

“He’s a hot kajillionaire Vicky set me up with.”

“Vicky knows hot kajillionaires?” Joe sounds impressed.

“No, there was a commercial on TV.”

“What the fuck,” Joe complains. “How much haven’t you told me? I thought we were friends!”

“I didn’t tell you because it was all stupid, there was no reason to tell you. And then, like, I don’t know, this stupid, made-up thing became real? Or something? I don’t understand what’s even happening. Today I started weeping over a rendition of _Silent Night_.”

Joe looks suitably horrified. “Are you going to start going all-in on this Christmas magic shit, too?”

“What makes you say that?” Patrick asks sharply.

“You just told me you cried over _Silent Night_.”

“No, I mean, ‘Christmas magic,’ why did you specifically say ‘Christmas magic’?” Patrick demands.

“I don’t know, it’s a saying you people have, isn’t it? You Christmas-celebrating people. There’s a whole fucking network.”

“That’s who I’m in love with.”

“Who?”

“The guy who owns the Christmas Magic Network.”

“Is this a metaphor?” Joe asks in confusion.

“No. Distressingly, it is _not_ a metaphor. It’s straightforward: The other night the guy who owns the Christmas Magic Network met me for drinks. And now I’m like some kind of lovesick puppy or something.”

“Well,” remarks Joe, “if he swept _you_ off your feet, that is some serious Christmas magic at work.”

“I don’t know what to do, and you are not being helpful. You’re supposed to be my best friend,” Patrick reminds him.

Joe snorts. “I’m only your best friend when you’re mad at Vicky.”

“Well, Vicky’s the one who set me up with this guy, she’d tell me to stop freaking out and go for it with this guy.”

“And why would that be the wrong advice?” Joe asks easily.

Patrick doesn’t have an answer to that, except for the fact that he’s terrified, terrified of how quickly and effortlessly Pete has wormed his way into a heart that no one else has come anywhere near. He says helplessly, “I feel like I’ve lost my mind.”

Joe shrugs, as unconcerned as always, and says, “Trick, that’s just adulthood, buddy.” Then he claps Patrick on the shoulder, announces, “Good talk,” and walks away.

“Not a good talk!” Patrick calls after him, and looks at his phone for the five hundredth time that day. _I feel that I should honestly tell you I am smitten_ , reads Pete’s text, and Patrick thinks, _Same_.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, all. To give you an update, my mother is thankfully fine. She's done with her isolation period and never developed any symptoms. The rest of us are still in quarantine for nine more days but at least we got our way by one deadline!
> 
> My uncle is probably not going to make it. The hospital has told my cousins there is nothing more to be done and they should prepare for the worst. 
> 
> So Christmas was emotionally exhausting, to put it mildly, and New Year's was more of the same. I'm sure it was that way for a lot of people, so ::hugs::

Patrick’s show is in one of those small venues that’s bigger than somebody’s basement but not so big that Pete has any trouble at all settling close enough to the stage to touch it. There are a couple of bands before Patrick’s, and they’re loud and energetic, and the crowd is raucous, enthusiasm at a growing fever pitch. Pete feels a little lonely, on his own in the crowd, slightly older than the target audience seems to be and out-of-practice with the entire experience. But he got into the building on the strength of telling the bouncer that Patrick had asked for him, and it turns out that’s a high that lingers, that tangible feeling of being favored by someone other people are impressed by, that carries Pete through his wait.

When Patrick’s band takes the stage, what Pete is not prepared for is the fact that Patrick is the _drummer_. Pete thought Patrick would be lead vocals, front-and-center, and instead he’s tucked behind the drum set, and Pete should feel regret at not having him unobstructed but upon reflection the distance is good because Patrick is…hot. And he is goddamn fucking hot _drumming_. Patrick drums with his teeth caught in his lower lip, concentrating, a trucker hat pulled down over his eyes, his hands nimble over his instrument. Patrick is so hot that Pete almost misses the songs, he’s watching him so greedily. And that is really saying something about Patrick’s hotness, because the songs are _good_. They’re _really good_. They’re a little surprising, interesting, make unexpected pivots that keep Pete’s ear engaged. The band’s singer is nowhere near as good as Patrick, and that’s a drawback. Also, the lyrics could be a bit better – Pete has a real pet peeve about songs with suboptimal lyrics. But hey, he can work with Patrick on that, that’s fixable. Really, Patrick’s songs are _incredible_.

Pete stands and watches Patrick play and listens to Patrick’s songs and it’s a moment that feels like destiny, like every event in his life has been a marker on this path Pete was taking without knowing it, this path that has led him right here, and now he just has to figure out what to do with that moment. Pete never feels like this, never feels like anything he’s doing is _right_ for him, like he fits in without any contortions. But he feels it now, in the middle of this crowd, watching and listening to Patrick: This is right. This is something – a rare, incredible thing – that feels _right_. He has to hold onto this with everything he’s worth.

Pete hangs around for Patrick after the show, because of course he does. And that’s how he meets Joe.

“So you’re the hot kajillionaire, huh?” is how Joe greets him.

Pete’s not sure how to take that. The _hot_ bit seems promising, the _kajillionaire_ bit maybe less so. “Am I that obvious?” he asks ruefully.

Joe grins. “Not really, but Patrick was watching you all night, and Patrick never watches anybody, he usually tries to pretend the crowd’s not there.”

Pete knows Patrick specifically invited him, so this shouldn’t be surprising to him, but still, his heart swells in his chest so much he’s surprised he doesn’t just take float entirely. But no, he stays with two feet on the ground.

Joe says, “I’m Joe,” and holds out his hand.

“I’m Pete,” Pete replies. “I loved your set, it was great.”

“Eh,” says Joe, and shrugs. “Could be better. As I’m sure Patrick will explain to you in great detail.”

Pete laughs. “Yes, he’s mentioned he’s a perfectionist.”

“Only when it comes to music. Otherwise he’s an absolute slob. We lived together briefly when we first got out of high school and we will never make that mistake again.”

“What are you two talking about?” Patrick asks breathlessly, rushing up to them. He changed his t-shirt and threw on a cardigan and the trucker hat is gone. His hair is plastered to his head with sweat and that shouldn’t be as sexy as Pete’s finding it, Pete thinks.

“My capybara,” Joe answers.

“Please don’t bother Pete with your capybara fantasies,” Patrick says.

“Have fun, you two crazy kids,” Joe tells them. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” He makes finger-guns at them as he moves away.

Pete says to Patrick, “His capybara fantasies?”

“He thinks there’s a capybara living in his heating vent.”

“It’s probably just a rat,” Pete points out. “Also, your show was fantastic and the fucking hottest thing I’ve ever seen.” Because that seems a much more important point to highlight.

Patrick’s reaction is to glow with pride like the sun. “Yeah? Did you like it?”

“Patrick, you’re so good,” Pete says truthfully. “You’re _so good_. The songs were incredible. You make me want to listen to more. You’re so good. Your lyrics could use some work.”

“Asshole,” Patrick says playfully, “I was going to let you get lucky tonight, too.”

“You wouldn’t respect me if I didn’t give it to you straight,” Pete replies, because that’s obvious about Patrick. “And you wouldn’t fuck me if you didn’t respect me. And you know the lyrics need some work.”

“Yeah,” says Patrick, “I’ve been hoping to meet a poet, do you know any?” He slides his hands into the pockets of his cardigan and that is the sexiest anyone has ever accomplished that movement.

Pete smiles irresistibly. “You should know: I’m smitten with you.”

“You’ve said,” Patrick replies, trying to sound prim and proper about it.

Pete takes a small step closer to Patrick, just a little more inside his boundaries. “And Joe said you spent the entire show watching me where usually you try to ignore the audience.”

Patrick stands his ground, lets Pete inch a step closer. “Joe also thinks a capybara lives in his heating vent,” Patrick breathes, in a tone of voice like it’s dirty talk.

Pete feels like it kind of is, even though he doesn’t want to follow the possible euphemism of Joe’s capybara too closely. He murmurs, his eyes on Patrick’s lips, “How are my getting-lucky odds looking?”

“You should ask me if I want to go home with you,” Patrick replies roughly.

“Do you want to go home with me?” Pete asks obediently.

“Yes, please,” says Patrick.

***

“I’m going to call us an Uber,” Pete announces, once they’re outside on the sidewalk in the bracing Chicago December air, “and you’re not going to tell me it’s too extravagant.”

Patrick laughs. “I’m not ordinarily that picky, you know. You just make me nervous with your…kajillionaire-ness.”

“Yeah, I’m not actually a kajillionaire. I don’t think anyone is.”

“Let’s put it this way: Do you know the price of eggs?”

Pete looks at him with amusement. “No. And neither do you, I bet.”

Pete can see Patrick’s blush even in the harsh, uneven lighting of the headlights passing over them. “Fuck you, yes, I do.”

“When is the last time you bought eggs?” Pete rejoins lightly.

“I buy eggs!” Patrick protests. “How dare you presume I don’t buy eggs! Maybe I cook eggs for myself every morning! Breakfast is the most important meal!”

“You don’t eat breakfast,” says Pete calmly.

Patrick narrows his eyes. “How do you know all these things about me?”

“You texted me yesterday, and I quote, ‘oh, fuck, I never wake up on time in the morning, I always have to just throw clothes on and run out the door.’ So from that I conclude that you’re not making yourself a frittata for breakfast in the morning.”

Patrick opens and closes his mouth, and then says, “Okay, fair, I don’t know the price of eggs.”

Pete smiles and looks at Patrick, at how lovely he is, and says, “Once I start kissing you, I am never going to stop.”

Patrick, who had been watching the cars passing by, looks at him then and smiles. It’s heartstoppingly sweet. Pete is going to take this guy home and fuck him through the mattress and then feed him oatmeal afterwards, because Patrick inspires a violent mix of impulses inside of him.

Their Uber pulls to a stop next to them and they clamber into the backseat together. Patrick shivers dramatically at ducking in from the cold, then inches closer to Pete and presses his cold hands underneath Pete’s shirt.

Pete yelps. “Your hands are like ice.”

“Turnabout is fair play,” Patrick says absently. He is definitely not just warming his hands, his fingertips are tracing Pete’s ribcage, tiptoeing over his nipples.

Pete manages, “I didn’t think you’d be the drummer,” and puts his hand as high up on Patrick’s thigh as he dares.

Patrick makes a sound very like a purr that goes straight to Pete’s cock, who’s like, _oh, great, are we actually finally going to get some action?_ Patrick says idly, “No?” and twists Pete’s nipple between his fingers. Pete gasps, hand tightening involuntarily on Patrick’s thigh. “What did you think I’d be?”

Pete can barely understand the question, not just because Patrick’s shifted to cause Pete’s hand to creep higher up toward his groin. He says, “The singer, of course,” and looks into Patrick’s color-changing kaleidoscope eyes.

Because that’s where he’s looking, he sees when they widen in surprise. Patrick says, “Did you really think that? I’m not much of a singer.”

Pete blinks and then says in shock, “You must be joking. You’re the most incredible singer I’ve ever heard. You’re so incredible I couldn’t get your voice out of my mind for an entire year. You’re the best singer in the entire universe, Patrick.”

Patrick looks stunned, then says, “I think maybe you’re biased by the position of my hands right now. Don’t worry, I’m going to bed with you, you can stop flattering me.”

Pete frowns. “Not at all. That’s not what this is about. The position of your hands is pretty good, but not as good as you are at singing.”

“I am not better at singing than I am at sex,” says Patrick.

“Well, so far I have an incomplete dataset,” Pete informs him. “Can I get back to you on that question?”

Patrick smiles at him, and shakes his head a little. He says, “You’re kind of unbelievable,” like Pete is somehow making up how incredible Patrick’s voice is, and then Patrick kisses him, and Pete can tell he means it to be a quick brush of mouths, a little peck on the lips, an _amuse bouche_ of a kiss, but Pete meant it when he said once he started kissing Patrick, he wouldn’t stop. He dives in whole-heartedly, picking up his hands so he can rake them through Patrick’s bedraggled hair, leaving it in sweat-soaked spikes between Pete’s fingers.

When the Uber finally stops, they tumble out of it wrapped up in each other, staggering along the sidewalk. Pete means to aim them though the front door of his building but misses entirely, but it’s okay, because in missing he ends up with Patrick plastered up against the wall, Patrick’s hands snagged in Pete’s hoodie, pulling him in harder and closer. They’re kissing filthy now, well beyond what should be happening in public, Pete from the tip of his toes to the top of his head is throbbing red-hot with how much he wants Patrick, greedy for the little musical sounds that escape from him when Pete does something particularly good with his tongue or his teeth.

And then, all of a sudden, a spotlight turns on, bathing them in sharp white light, and a voice says, “Pete, sorry, but could you shift a little to your right, from this angle we can’t really see your date.”

Patrick freezes up against the wall, freezes mid-kiss, freezes mid-grope.

Pete, perplexed and sex-fuzzy, turns his head away from Patrick, squinting into the spotlight, and says, “What?” And then, once his eyes adjust to the glare, he can see the camera crew beyond the spotlight, rolling on them.

“Oh, my God,” Patrick whispers.

Pete looks at him, still feeling slow and draggy.

The voice speaks again. “Do you mind if we mic you? We didn’t catch that.”

“What?” This is all Pete can think of to say. He has no idea what is going on.

Patrick squirms and says in a small voice, “Get off me.”

So Pete turns his intelligent questions to him. “What?” He feels he is reaching a crescendo of quizzicalness, it’s impressive.

“Get off me,” Patrick repeats. “Get off me, get off me!” With each repetition, he gets a little louder and a little more hysterical, and then he gives Pete a final shove that sends him stumbling backward.

And then he gives Pete a glare that makes Pete feel like the lowest form of cockroach, and then he starts walking away.

Pete can’t figure out anything that is going on, but the most important thing is to get Patrick inside where they cannot be followed by this weird camera crew thing which is the second thing Pete has to tackle. “Patrick,” Pete says, bounding after him. “Wait—”

“No,” Patrick snaps. “No.” He rounds on Pete suddenly. “I cannot believe I was _such_ an _idiot_.” Patrick is clearly furious, and also clearly _hurt_.

“What?” Pete says blankly. What the fuck is _happening_?

“I am never like this,” Patrick shouts at him, “I am _never fucking like this_. Fuck you, you know it? I mean, I should have known it was all a set-up, it was an ad campaign, it was marketing, it was fucking late-stage capitalism or whatever you call this nightmare world where you’d do this to me just to get some footage for whatever fucking Christmas Magic special you’re pulling together.”

The penny finally drops for Pete. “Hang on, you think I set this up?”

“They are wearing goddamn Christmas Magic _merch_ ,” Patrick snaps furiously, pointing his finger toward the camera crew.

Pete looks over his shoulder, frowning, and they… _are_ wearing Christmas Magic polo shirts and Christmas Magic hats. This isn’t just overzealous paparazzi; this is a Christmas Magic camera crew.

“How many other dates are you going on for this little scheme, huh?” Patrick demands, bringing Pete’s bewildered attention back to him. “How many people are you stringing along? I hope I’m not going to be the worst television for you. I hope I wasn’t the most goddamn pathetic.”

“What you think is happening here is not what is happening here,” Pete insists, and then turns over his shoulder to the stupid fucking camera crew. “Get back. All of you need to stay back.”

“No, who cares, right?” Patrick cuts in. “Who cares now? Let them get closer, let them get fucking closeups, at least let me get a few streams out of this or something.”

“Patrick,” Pete begs, “come inside, please come inside, this isn’t me, I didn’t set this up—”

“This isn’t you?” Patrick laughs, harsh and unamused. “You are the CEO of the goddamn Christmas Magic Network. Who are you kidding, Pete?” 

“I don’t even believe in any of this fucking Christmas Magic bullshit,” Pete bites out.

“I hope you’re happy,” Patrick says flatly. “I hope you got whatever it was you wanted. Merry Christmas, Mr. Wentz.”

“Patrick, please—” Pete lunges forward, catches a hand on Patrick’s sleeve.

Patrick looks from Pete’s hand back to his face and says mildly, “If you touch me again, I will punch you. And I don’t think that’s the footage you want for your movie.”

“This isn’t my movie, this _isn’t my movie_ , please don’t go, Patrick.”

Patrick studies him for a very long moment. Pete holds his breath, because maybe Patrick is about to decide…about to decide… Patrick exhales sharply, a tight self-deprecating bark of laughter, and says, “Christ, you were good. You were _really, really_ good.”

And then he walks away.

Pete doesn’t go after him. Pete stands, stunned, watching him go. And then Pete whirls on the camera crew behind him, the camera still rolling, the spotlight still illuminated. “Shut this fucking camera off,” Pete commands, “and tell me who fucking sent you. Right now.”

***

When Patrick calls Vicky, his hand is shaking. He’s been trembling all over since walking away from Pete, a violent adrenaline crash, an aftershock of his anger. He can’t get it under control.

Vicky answers curiously, because yeah, this was supposed to be his hot date night with Pete, he’d told her that, she’d teased him about it.

“Fuck you,” Patrick says, and he means to say it harshly and meanly but instead he just says it brokenly, voice shaking like the rest of him. “Fuck you forever,” he says, just as unconvincingly.

“Patrick?” Vicky sounds bewildered and concerned. “What happened, babe?”

“He had a fucking camera crew. It was all some fucking setup. Some stupid marketing campaign. Some Christmas Magic reality show. Who the fuck knows?” Patrick pulls the sleeve of his cardigan down over his hand.

“He was filming you?” Vicky sounds appropriately shocked.

“God, it was awful.” Patrick closes his eyes, which is bad, because when he closes his eyes it flashes like an afterimage against the back of his eyelids, a visceral afterimage complete with emotions. He can still feel so vividly the giddy soaring feeling of kissing a boy he wanted very much, who claimed he was incredible and looked at him like he hung the moon, and unfortunately he is still very much vividly feeling all of that crashing down around him, that spotlight clicking on, that camera crew jockeying into place. It’s all so stupid, he’d known that he didn’t know the first thing about Pete Wentz, not really. He’d known he’d just met him, and that all indications were that Pete was very out-of-his-league and his behavior was suspicious. He’d known that he didn’t hang the moon, so he should have caught on so much sooner that Pete pretending like he had was just that: pretend; a vicious act; the worst sort of cruelty.

“Patrick, where are you?” Vicky asks gently.

“On my fire escape. I didn’t want Jake to hear me, he already thinks I’m the world’s most pathetic roommate.”

“Patrick, it’s twelve degrees outside.”

“Yeah, it’s cold,” Patrick says dully. He doesn’t really feel it anymore. He doesn’t feel anything but humiliation and rage and such undeniable _heartbreak_.

“Come over,” Vicky says.

“No, it’s okay,” Patrick replies half-heartedly.

“No,” Vicky says firmly. “Come over. Lucy’s out for the night at her girlfriend’s, it’ll just be us.”

Patrick hesitates, but then he agrees, because he really doesn’t want to be alone at the moment.

When he gets to Vicky, she hugs him tightly and Patrick hates that. He says, “I’m fine,” even as he hugs her back.

“You’re freezing,” Vicky responds. “You’ve only got a cardigan on.”

Patrick looks at it dully. “I wasn’t expecting to be outside. I was going to go directly from the show to his place. Because I’m an _idiot_.”

“You’re not an idiot. Come inside, get warm.”

“Vicky, all indications are that I am _definitely_ an idiot,” Patrick explains, as Vicky tugs him in and over to the couch.

“Put this blanket on,” Vicky says, wrapping him up. “Let me get you some tea.”

The blanket _is_ nice, so Patrick snuggles deeper into it. Vicky goes into the kitchen to fiddle with getting him tea, and Patrick looks unseeingly at whatever she was watching on television, some kind of reality show with people yelling.

When Vicky comes back with the tea, he intends to change the subject entirely, he really does, but he looks at Vicky and what comes out is, “How did I not realize I was being played?” and he sounds all full of anguished hurt and it’s so annoying.

“This is all my fault,” Vicky says sympathetically, and sits on the couch next to him. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t have even an inkling that he wasn’t sincere. He seemed so nice, so into you.”

“He’s a hot kajillionaire, why the fuck did either of us think for even a second that he was being serious when he claimed to be into me?” Christ, said out loud, the absurdity is so palpable, it has a specific bitter taste on Patrick’s tongue.

“Patrick, you are amazing, he could not do better than you, so of course I believed him.”

Patrick shakes his head. He has his hands wrapped around the mug of tea. He can tell the water didn’t get quite hot enough to make a good cup of tea, and the lukewarm tea doesn’t interest him, but the mug is something comforting to hold, and the tea inside the mug is something comforting to look at when he says, “I never feel this way about anybody, I never let anyone get so close to—” He cuts himself off, swallows thickly. “I don’t know what it says about me that my judgment is always _so bad_.”

“No, it’s not,” Vicky says kindly.

Patrick scoffs and sips his tea. Yeah, it’s way too cool but it’s a nice distraction.

Vicky brushes a soothing hand through Patrick’s hair and says, “Your judgment is usually exquisite, I mean, look who you chose for a best friend.”

Patrick chokes out a laugh, because if he doesn’t laugh he’ll start crying.

“I’m so sorry,” Vicky says again. “I’m so sorry he turned out to be the biggest asshole in all of Chicago.”

Patrick takes another sip of his tea and says, “Yeah. Me, too.”

***

Pete is in Bebe’s office when she gets to work. She gets in impressively early. Not much before her arrival, Pete watched the sun rise over the skyline and thought, heavily, of how much he hated his life. That’s the point he’s at right now. He wants to crawl into a hole somewhere and never come out. It’s unbearable that he’s expected to _be_ places right now. Be places and do things when he just wants to cease existing, just wants to pull blankets over his head and not have the world be a place anymore.

He needs to get out of the city, he recognizes. He needs to get away from his cavernous apartment and his CEO life and the sidewalk where Patrick walked away from him.

Bebe walks in and jumps when she sees him, nearly spilling her coffee. “Pete,” she says in surprise.

“Hi,” he replies, and he’s amazed that his voice actually works, just like it did before all this happened to him, how much of the world didn’t change when that spotlight turned on. And how much of it did, of course. “Didn’t mean to scare you,” he adds absently.

“You didn’t,” Bebe says, putting her coffee down. “I mean, you did, but it’s okay.” She looks warily at Pete, where he’s sitting in her office guest chair. “Am I…in trouble?”

Pete looks back at her evenly. “No,” he decides finally. “Not really.”

“Okay,” she says slowly. “That didn’t sound very convincing. Hang on, how did you know I’d come in today? It’s Saturday.”

“I know things about my employees, you know. I’m not a completely incompetent, clueless boss. I know who works really hard and who slacks off. I know who comes in on Saturdays during the busy season to make sure everything’s under control.” Pete takes a deep breath. “You have done a really good job with the Christmas marketing and, like I said, this isn’t really your fault.”

“What isn’t?” Bebe asks, confused.

“But you need to get rid of Shane and Chris.”

“What?”

“They need to be out of the company, quickly and absolutely, and if I ever see either one of them ever again, I may kill them. So, you know, convey that message for me, will you?”

Bebe is staring at him. “Pete. What the hell happened?”

“Did you know they were having me watched?”

“Having you watched?” Bebe echoes in shock.

“Yeah, I didn’t think you knew. Your name never came up, not in all the digging I did last night. Or earlier this morning.” Pete drags an exhausted hand down his face. “I don’t know. Whenever it happened, whenever I did it, your name never came up. They were having me watched, on the suspicion that I had found the redheaded piano player, that I might try to hook up with the redheaded piano player. They knew I wouldn’t consent to doing that for the marketing so they took it upon themselves to do it for the marketing.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bebe breathes. “What did they _do_?”

“So then,” Pete continues, and he can’t believe how dispassionately he is telling this story, “when I happened to take Patrick back to my place last night, or early this morning, whenever it was, there was a full-fledged Christmas Magic camera crew there to capture every passionate kiss and accompanying moan.”

“Oh, fuck,” Bebe says meaningfully. “Pete, I’m sorry, I—”

“You didn’t have anything to do with it. I know. But they need to be gone.”

“Yeah, of course, I—Yeah. Are you alright?”

“No,” Pete snaps suddenly. “No, I’m not alright.” Then he takes a shaky breath in, trying to keep his temper in check. His voice trembles with the effort of it when he speaks again. “I’m trying to be really fair about all of this. Okay? I am trying not to blame you, because, again, it’s _not really_ your fault. But I do kind of blame you. Because I was going along, a-okay, and then you made me think that… I don’t believe in this Christmas Magic stupidity, and I was _fine_ like that, and then you got in my head that I should go for this ridiculous fairy-tale happy ending thing and—I was _fine_ before, Bebe. I was absolutely _fine_. My heart wasn’t broken and he was just a guy with a nice voice who sang some sad Christmas songs in a bar I went in one time. And now he’s _Patrick_ , and I know things about him, I know how he kisses, and the way he smiles when he’s really pleased and not being sardonic, and that he doesn’t do this kind of thing very often either. Now I know that I broke his heart last night, and I really didn’t need to know that, Bebe. At the best of times I am holding my life together with a wing and a prayer and I just need you to…not disrupt that again. Okay? That’s what I need.”

Bebe looks stunned by this speech. She says immediately, “Of course, yes, I’m sorry,” but Pete can tell she’s still processing everything.

Pete gets up, because what more does he have to say? “I’m going to Vermont,” he says, because oh, yeah, he should probably tell someone.

“Vermont?”

“I need to get away from Chicago,” Pete replies simply. “Fire Shane and Chris.”

“Pete.” Bebe’s voice stops him just as he’s stepped out of her office. “Pete, I’m so sorry.” She sounds honest and aching with it. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

“I know,” Pete replies. “Like I said: It’s not really your fault.”

***

It’s weird, it really is, because most of the time Pete is frustrated with his parents, feels misunderstood and uncomfortably different, resents their expectations and their judginess. But also Pete feels safest in their home, because, unavoidably, the safest time period of his life was when he was a kid, before he learned about the future destined for him, when he was just a boy who liked Transformers and Garbage Pail Kids and felt loved just as he was. Pete’s been chasing that feeling ever since he lost it.

He’s chasing it now, that elusive safety, that feeling that he can relax for one goddamn second, let his guard down, just be _Pete_. He gets to the house in Vermont, nestled by the lake, cradled by the mountains, and walks across the front porch, and the door is opened before he can knock. His mother. Because, of course, she would have been told about the flight plan he’d had the private plane file, she would have known he was on his way.

“Pete,” she says, perplexed by his arrival. “Did you tell us you were coming?”

Pete shakes his head. He doesn’t trust himself to speak.

She says, “Come inside, it’s freezing,” and bustles him inside. The wide entry is decked out for Christmas, because of course it is, it’s fucking Christmastime and they’re the Christmas Magic family, in three days it will be Christmas Eve and the house will be full of important investors. There is garland shot through with red velvet ribbon and twinkling lights twirled all around the balustrade of the magnificent staircase, up to the second floor. There’s a four-foot Santa by the front door, ceramic hand frozen in outstretched bell-ringing. There’s a cluster of bright white reindeer grazing in the curve formed by the staircase as it winds its way upward.

“God,” Pete says, looking around him, “I fucking _hate_ Christmas.”

“Pete, I really wish you wouldn’t say things like that. How can you hate Christmas? It’s impossible to hate Christmas.”

“Can I stay here for a few days?” Pete asks.

“Of course you can. You don’t need to ask. This is your home. Anyway, weren’t you coming tomorrow to stay for Christmas?”

“Tuesday,” Pete says, heading up the stairs. “I was coming on Tuesday.”

“Oh, that’s right, you always wait for the absolute last moment,” his mother notes drily from the foot of the stairs.

“You know, this is very dangerous, you can’t actually use the railing,” Pete points out, as his hand snags in intertwined holly and ivy.

“Pete,” his mother says, “are you okay?” And she does sound genuinely concerned. “Did something happen?”

Pete looks back at her, and thinks of how little she would understand. _I met this boy, and I let myself think we had a chance, and then it got ruined, but that’s okay, I would have ruined it eventually anyway._ She would tell him he was being dramatic, anyone would be lucky to have him, he just needed to find the right person, et cetera. Pete feels like he could deliver the pep talk in his sleep.

He says wearily, “I’ve just been up all night, I’m tired. I’ll come down for dinner.”

***

As it turns out, he never makes it as far as dinner. There’s a knock on his bedroom door in the late afternoon, just as the sun is starting to dip behind the mountains. Pete has a sunset view from his bedroom window, and sunset is so early at this time of year, so near the shortest day, that Pete thinks of how long and monotonous the night ahead of him stretches, starting so soon.

The knock doesn’t wake him up, because he never slept. He just laid on the bed feeling sorry for himself. He says, “Yeah,” without interest.

His mother comes in and sits on the bed and looks at him with concern. She is holding a phone. “Is this why you’re here?” she asks tenderly.

“Huh?” Pete says.

She shows him the phone. It’s a video frozen on its first frame, which is his face. _Oh, fuck_ , thinks Pete, and slowly sits up and takes the phone. He hits play with great trepidation. “I don’t even believe in any of this fucking Christmas Magic bullshit,” says Pete on the phone, with great feeling.

Pete’s stomach sinks. “Oh, no,” he says. “How many people have seen this?”

“How many people _haven’t_ seen it?” his mother counters, and points to the viewcount.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Pete says.

“Why would you say such a thing?” his mother demands. “I know you hate Christmas but you couldn’t have kept it to yourself? You had to say such a thing in _public_? On _tape_?”

“I didn’t—It was—” Pete doesn’t know how to explain this to his mother. It’s too much of a fucking mess, and it’s not like they ever communicate on the same wavelength anyway.

“Your father is being inundated with calls from investors,” his mother continues.

Of course he is. Because Pete’s never actually been the head of the company, he’s just been the symbolic figurehead, continuity in the Wentz line, whatever fucking fairy-tale they’re writing. Pete’s entire life is _marketing_ , no wonder it was also his own personal dating app. “I’ll help,” Pete says, dragging himself out of bed.

“Pete.” His mother catches his hand, hangs onto it fiercely, and he meets her eyes. They’re his eyes, he knows. His mother’s eyes, and his father’s company. This is who he is. “You’re the Wentz with the Black mother,” she says in a low, intent voice. “That means you have to be _perfect_.”

And he knows this. He’s not an idiot. “I know,” he says, exhausted. “I’m sorry.”

His mother squeezes his hand one last time.

And then he goes off to meet his punishment.

His father is on some kind of Zoom meeting in his study. His eyes flicker to Pete when he shows up in the open doorway but his expression doesn’t shift from jovial. He’s soothing whoever he’s talking to. “All one big misunderstanding,” he’s saying heartily. “No one loves Christmas more than Pete. I’m telling you. He’s planning to dress up as Santa Claus this year. He’s got a sleigh and everything.”

Pete lifts his eyebrows. He definitely does not have a sleigh. Or a Santa costume.

“Pete _loves_ Christmas,” his father continues, “and he is one hundred percent committed to the success of this company. You know how he is, this is just one more marketing stunt. He’s full of plot twists, is my boy. Wait until you see what he’s got planned next.”

There’s a bunch of laughter and general comments along the line of _kids, they can be unpredictable_ , or whatever. Pete sits in the chair in front of his father’s desk and twists a strand of his hair around his finger.

“See you soon,” his father says to his computer monitor, and then ends the call, and then he looks across the desk at Pete. And then he sighs heavily. “ _Pete_ ,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” Pete says immediately.

“I’m not even angry, I’m just _bewildered_ ,” his father replies.

And that’s the worst part, his parents are never angry with him, they’re just always endlessly _disappointed_. They love him and love him through the difficulty he causes, perpetually _disappointed_. Pete really doesn’t want to disappoint people anymore, and it’s all he ever seems to do. He swallows thickly and tries to formulate his defense.

“Do you hate the company _that_ much?” his father asks. “ _Really_? It’s not like you’re selling guns or dubious pharmaceuticals. You’re selling _Christmas_.”

“Selling Christmas,” Pete echoes dully. “I mean, it _is_ a little crass.”

“Somebody’s got to do it. The least we can do is believe in the _not_ crass part of things while we’re doing it.”

Pete takes a deep breath. “I just don’t feel…very cheerful, or magical, and it can be kind of exhausting to pretend that I do all the time.”

“No one’s asking you to be a fucking elf, Pete.”

Pete gives him a look. “Aren’t you?”

He heaves an enormous sigh. “Look, I thought this was going to be good for you. You’ve always complained about feeling aimless, without a purpose. You’re a genius networker and a smart marketer, Pete, there’s no reason you shouldn’t _love_ this job, it is literally in your blood. I don’t want it to make you unhappy, but I’m worried that I don’t know what would make you happy. And neither do you.”

It’s a fair point. Pete doesn’t have a rejoinder to it. He takes a labored breath in, then lets it out, hoping to settle the fidget he can feel inside his chest, the trapped terror of his heart. He had one crystal-clear moment of knowing what he wanted, standing watching Patrick perform, letting Patrick’s songs wash over him. It feels like it happened a million years ago, to someone else, a pretty piece of fiction written for a Christmas Magic movie pitched across his desk.

“Your mother made you snickerdoodles when we got the flight plan that you were coming here,” his father says briskly. “You should go have some.”

“I can help with this,” Pete says half-heartedly.

“Yes,” his father agrees. “You can. You can figure out what kind of genius new marketing ploy this whole mess can be worked into.”

***

The bar is dead on the Sunday night before Christmas Eve. Patrick is playing for two people at the bar – both of whom are hitting inappropriately on Vicky, and he knows Vicky can take care of herself but also he’s going to deck one or both of them eventually because that would be immensely satisfying, he’s been wanting to punch someone all weekend – and a single couple tucked at a corner table who he’s pretty sure are having an affair because they jump and look startled every time the door opens.

Which it does now, and a woman walks inside, looks around, and then takes a seat at a table near the piano. She looks a little expectant and a little hesitant, and Patrick wonders if she’s meeting someone. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Vicky head over to grab a drink order from her, and he launches into an admittedly lackluster version of _Frosty the Snowman_. Whatever, Lauren hasn’t said anything to him about his performance, both because there’s no one in the bar and because Patrick can glare people into submission when he really needs to.

He lets _Frosty_ lead him into his break, and he’s pushing back from the piano, planning to go glower around the people at the bar, when the woman says to him, “Excuse me. Patrick, right?”

Patrick looks at her warily. Great, what now? “Why?” he asks suspiciously.

“My name’s Bebe,” she says. “Bebe Rexha.”

“Okay,” Patrick agrees. He really doesn’t care.

“I was wondering if I could talk to you for a second.”

“If you’re a reporter, then no, I really don’t want to talk about—”

“I’m the head of marketing for Christmas Magic, Inc.,” she says.

Patrick smiles sardonically. “Oh, _you’re_ the head of marketing, huh? Thanks, this has all been a total blast.”

“I know,” she says, not unsympathetically. “Look, can I buy you a drink and apologize and just talk to you for a second?”

“I don’t drink on my shift,” Patrick replies.

“Please,” she says. “I feel really bad about everything.”

Patrick hesitates, because his instinct is to be rude and dismissive, but being rude to people hasn’t made him feel better, and it’s so exhausting. He sighs and takes the extra seat at her table. “I don’t know what you could say to make it better. Apology accepted, okay? Let’s just move on.”

“Have you watched the video?” Bebe asks.

No. He hasn’t. He tried, when it went viral, because he wanted to be strong enough, tough enough, to watch the video and not care about it. But the video starts with him and Pete stumbling out of the car together, wrapped up in each other, with Pete pressing him against a wall and kissing him, and there’s a moment when Patrick smiles, breaking the kiss, and Pete’s lips curve into an answering smile before he bites back in, and it’s a flicker of a moment, Patrick didn’t even notice it happening when it happened, but it _destroyed_ him to see it on the video, and he stopped watching the video and has tried not to think about it again.

Patrick says flatly, “This is a really terrible apology.”

“There’s this part—have you seen it—one second—sorry.” Bebe thrusts her phone out at him, pleading with her eyes when he backs up like it’s a weapon. “Please, just this one bit, can you watch it?”

“I really don’t want to—”

“You’re not even in it. It’s just important,” Bebe insists, and hits play.

On the phone, Pete says, _I don’t even believe in any of this fucking Christmas Magic bullshit._

Patrick thinks that he vaguely remembers Pete saying that, now that he’s watching it.

“This is everywhere,” Bebe says, taking the phone back. “It’s _everywhere_.”

Patrick doesn’t know what to say. “Oh,” he offers.

“He didn’t set you up, Patrick. He wasn’t behind the camera crew. Think about it: Do you really think he wanted _that_ out there? This has been a nightmare. He’s getting ridiculed all over the internet, people are boycotting the company, investors are pulling out, we’re bracing for our stock price to plummet when the markets open tomorrow morning.”

Patrick shifts uncomfortably. The fallout for him has been virtually nonexistent, aside from a broken heart. Nobody seems to care about the guy in the video with the Christmas Magic CEO. And now, Patrick supposes, he understands why: the story is Pete’s denouncement of the fable his company is built on. “I didn’t…I didn’t know it was that bad.”

“It’s _catastrophic_ , Patrick.” Bebe is solemn and grave.

Fuck, thinks Patrick, he hates Pete very much for how easily he slipped inside Patrick’s heart and then trashed the place but, well, he doesn’t _really_ want his whole life to be destroyed. “How’s Pete?” he asks, hating himself for caring but undeniably he cares.

“How do you think Pete is?” Bebe asks pointedly. “Two days ago he was falling in love, and now he’s lost the boy and he’s about to lose the rest of his life. It hasn’t been a stellar weekend for Pete Wentz.”

Patrick looks across at Bebe. He taps his fingers on the table in a nervous beat. He thinks of Pete in the audience at the show, watching him raptly, of the shy tilt to Pete’s head when he asked if he might get lucky, of the way his face lit up with delight like Patrick was no sure thing. Patrick feels dizzy with confusion, the way he’s felt all weekend. He would have sworn everything with Pete was real. And now Bebe’s sitting here with what could be a further trick…or what could be a rescue attempt. “Did he tell you he was falling in love?”

“Patrick, for a brief period of time last week, Pete Wentz believed in Christmas magic. And I don’t think he’s done that since he was a little kid.”

Patrick takes a deep breath, letting himself sway with the impact of that, and then he frowns. “Why would you come and tell me all of this? What can I do about this mess now?”

Bebe says, “I was hoping you would ask.”

***

“The thing about you,” Maeve says calmly over the phone, “is that you’re always too epic for your own good, even in your fuck-ups.”

“Yeah.” Pete laughs without amusement and skips another rock over the lake. “Well, I might have finally epic-ed myself out of this family.”

“No, you haven’t,” Maeve denies.

“Out of the company, then. Which is the same thing.”

“I’m not involved with the company and I’m still a Wentz. And don’t even say the sexist thing you’re about to say. It’s not just because I’m a girl and you’re a boy. Anyway, Dad says you’re hanging in there.”

“Yeah, he means I haven’t been fired _yet_. Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve, I think they don’t want to be seen as so cold-hearted as to fire their CEO right before Christmas. Even if it is a CEO who hates Christmas. Did you call Dad to check up on me?”

“Yes, because it took you a full day to return any of my calls,” Maeve guilt-trips him. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Of course I’m not okay, Maeve,” he snaps.

There’s a moment of silence. “Alright. True. Silly question. Can I help?”

“Do you know how to pull rabbits out of hats?”

“What?”

“That’s what they’re all waiting for. They all think I’m going to pull a rabbit out of my hat. Surprise! I know exactly how to fix this, how to make everyone forget the Christmas Magic CEO thinks the whole thing is bullshit! Except I have no fucking clue, Maeve. So far the only thing I’ve come up with is to run some kind of ad where I hypnotize people into forgetting this ever happened.”

“I think that’s illegal,” Maeve says. “I bet there’s some kind of FCC regulation about that.”

“Then I’ll hypnotize the FCC to forget about the regulation. Why hasn’t anyone tried this before? It sounds like genius to me. Foolproof plan.”

Maeve lets his sarcasm settle over the call, then says, “What are you doing right now?”

“Skipping rocks.”

“Isn’t it cold?”

“Not cold enough to snow, which I’m pretty sure is also my fault. Tomorrow I’m supposed to be driving a sleigh but they can’t make it work without any snow, so…yeah. Definitely my fault.”

“You’re going to drive a sleigh?” Maeve repeats.

“Yup. They’ve even tracked down reindeer to pull it.”

“Eight of them?”

“No, one, but I think that’s enough.”

“Do you know how to drive a sleigh?” Maeve sounds perplexed.

“Nope. So I think that’s going to go well, too! What could possibly go wrong?” Pete asks cheerily.

Maeve sighs. “Look, I’ll be there tomorrow and I’ll help you.”

“Do _you_ know how to drive a sleigh?”

“I will help you not have to drive the sleigh,” says Maeve.

“Pete!” his mother’s voice drifts down to him.

He turns to look over his shoulder. She’s standing on the back terrace of the house, waving to him enthusiastically. “Oh, fuck,” he says, “Mom’s calling me inside. She probably made more snickerdoodles. She keeps making me snickerdoodles and I feel like it’s my last meal before the electric chair or something.”

“She just knows you love them,” Maeve points out.

“I love them a little less now,” says Pete.

“ _Pete_ ,” his mother calls more urgently.

Pete sighs. “I’ve really got to go.”

“I will see you tomorrow,” Maeve promises him. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Yeah,” Pete says, not believing it for a second, and ends the call and starts trudging up the hill toward his mother. “What awful emergency is happening now?” he asks when he reaches her.

“Come see,” she replies cagily.

Pete frowns, his stomach flip-flopping nervously. He doesn’t even want to contemplate what further calamity is about to occur. He follows his mother through the house to the front door, and then she gestures to it and steps aside.

“What is this?” Pete asks quizzically.

“Open the door,” she says.

So Pete opens the door.

There’s a spotlight shining in his eyes, which immediately makes him squint, and there’s a large number of people arranged on the front porch, and…there’s Patrick.

On the wide, gracious front porch of the house in Vermont where Pete has experienced his happiest moments, there’s Patrick. He’s hatless, and wearing an overcoat that makes him look weirdly like he’s playing dress-up, and he’s holding a bouquet of maroon chrysanthemums, with a single cheerful daisy. Pete stares at the flowers. Pete stares at Patrick.

“ _Patrick_ ,” he manages to say, with the last air left in his lungs because he’s forgotten to breathe.

“Hi—” Patrick starts.

Pete doesn’t hear the rest of whatever Patrick might say, because Pete swiftly closes the two steps separating them and hugs him fiercely. This makes no sense, he has no idea why Patrick is there, but he’s just had the worst weekend of his entire life and it would be so much better if Patrick would just hug him back.

Patrick hugs him back. And he leans his head down so he can murmur directly into Pete’s ear, “It’s okay. I’m here now. It’s going to be okay.”

And there’s no real reason why Patrick being there should mean things are going to be okay, but Pete believes it whole-heartedly, clutching at him for dear life. He’s dimly aware that there are people on the porch with them, a spotlight shining on them, he probably should preserve some dignity and not do this, but he just turns his face into Patrick’s neck and lets Patrick hug him back.

“You’re okay,” Patrick whispers against his ear, and Pete believes him.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On today, the last day of my quarantine, I bring you, finally, the rest of this fic. And let this be a lesson to all of us not to start writing cheerful Christmas stories in the middle of a pandemic lol
> 
> Anyway, it was a little rocky writing it, but I think it turned out coherent and cohesive in the end!
> 
> Many many massive thanks to carbon, who did a great deal of cheerleading, especially through (gasp!) editing. And thanks to everyone else who did so much emotional checking-in during this last little while. It's appreciated. ::hugs::

When Patrick sees the house in Vermont, well, he has his doubts.

Bebe had called it a “lake house” and the image that conjured in Patrick’s mind was not this grandiose mini-castle thing. He misses the safety of his hat (“The camera can’t get a clear shot,” Bebe had explained, and Patrick had wanted to reply, _That’s the point_ ) and this overcoat someone had thrust upon him was very not him and also clearly sized for a much taller man, the sleeves were comically long and it hit at a weird place on his legs. He had fought against the monstrous bouquet of poinsettias that had been pitched to him and the whole ride up the driveway of this absurd estate – surely several miles long -- he keeps looking at his bouquet of chrysanthemums and one cheerful daisy and hoping that any of this was the right choice. Like, there’s no guarantee Pete’s going to want to see him again after the things Patrick said to him that night, after how much Patrick’s managed to explode Pete’s life, after how little Patrick thought of Pete to think he would have set them up like that. Patrick’s been drowning in guilt, and maybe he’s doing this to try to assuage this, and not for Pete at all.

Of course, Vicky told him to do it. Vicky had said, _You walked away from the only guy I’ve ever seen you really like for something that wasn’t even his fault_.

Patrick had said, _Yeah, and doesn’t that prove I shouldn’t be doing this at all? I should just get back to music and give up on this whole stupid thing._

Vicky had just given him a look. She was right. There was never any question in Patrick’s mind that he couldn’t just give up on Pete. Not really. And so now here he is...doing... _this_. And it would serve him right if Pete just punches him in the face. Right in front of all the cameras.

That’s not what Pete does.

Pete catapults into a tight, desperate hug, and Patrick knows this was the right choice. In fact, Patrick can’t believe how long it took him to come find Pete and _help_ him. Pete is trembling against him, and Patrick murmurs something nonsense soothing at him and thinks how he will do literally anything in the future to make sure he never hurts this man ever again. 

So Patrick stands there in clothes that barely fit him and lets Pete burrow into him in front of all the cameras. This is going to be viral in ten minutes, Patrick thinks. 

Patrick thinks how it would have been awesome to fall in love with someone, you know, slightly less complicated.

But then he probably wouldn’t have fallen in love.

“Okay,” Patrick says loudly, deciding to take some control here, “I think you got enough footage, Pete and I are going inside now.” And then he nudges Pete inside and closes the door.

Pete, his hands still clinging to Patrick’s coat, blinks at him in astonishment. “What are you doing here?” he asks. “What are you _doing_ here?”

“Um,” says Patrick, looking beyond Pete to a woman hovering in an alcove. Next to an enormous pile of glossy tinsel snowballs. This family does _not_ fuck around with the Christmas decorations. Which Patrick probably should have expected. The foyer is huge and it is like stepping into the North Pole if Santa decorated the North Pole entirely in Pottery Barn. “Hi,” Patrick says awkwardly. No wonder they wanted him to carry poinsettias. He is very obviously the not-Christmas thing in this scene, the thing that doesn’t belong.

Pete looks over his shoulder and says, “Oh, that’s my mom,” sounding faintly surprised, like maybe just everything is surprising to Pete now.

“Hi,” Patrick says to Pete’s mom.

“Hello,” she says, beaming at him. “Welcome.”

“Mom, I need to talk to Patrick,” Pete says.

“Don’t let me stop you,” Pete’s mother replies happily, but makes absolutely no move to leave them alone.

Pete rolls his eyes and lets go of Patrick’s coat to grab his bouquet-less hand and drag him up the garland-festooned staircase, and then down sixteen different hallways, the place is a fucking maze. Finally the end up in a room that is utterly devoid of Christmas decorations. A Christmas vacuum. The room is basically the size of Patrick’s entire apartment. It has walls and ceilings painted jet black, and a row of windows overlooking the lake and the mountains and the early sunset. There’s a cozy window seat reading nook, and the floor is covered in piles of books and notebooks. It’s cluttered chaos, and it feels very Pete.

“Nice,” Patrick remarks, and then wonders if that sounded sarcastic, considering the mess. “I mean, it really is nice. It feels like you. Which I mean in a good way. And it’s a nice view.” 

“Why are you here?” Pete asks breathlessly. “What is going on?”

“Bebe said that—”

“If this is some kind of trick,” Pete cuts him off, “if this is just all some kind of new marketing gimmick she’s come up with, don’t even tell me, just…just leave, because I can’t deal with—or maybe stay. Maybe stay but don’t tell me it’s fake and then—No, that sounds unhealthy, I take it back, just go. Just go, don’t make me…don’t make me do these things for the cameras.”

Patrick looks at Pete, who looks jittery and unsettled. His hair is frizzing into curls, his bun is bedraggled, and his eyes are surrounded by dark circles. He looks worn down, the package of him coming undone, a ribbon that’s unraveled. Patrick decides that what Pete needs is calm, because Pete’s life has been stormy these past few days. So Patrick says, calmly, “Okay, look around.”

Pete, confused, looks around. “Is this about the black paint?” he asks. “I was a kid and…I don’t care enough to change it now.”

“No, this isn’t about the black paint. Do you see any cameras in this room?”

Pete looks around himself again, as if to double-check, then looks back at Patrick. “I do not,” he replies carefully, like this is a trick question.

“Okay, then,” Patrick says, and kisses him.

Pete makes a tiny sound, and lets Patrick kiss him. His hands grasp Patrick’s coat tentatively, uncertain of their positioning, in stark contrast to how he’d grabbed him before. He feels shaky and unsettled to Patrick, like he might crumble to pieces, like too-fluffy snow that won’t hold the shape of a snowball, so Patrick kisses gently and persuasively, hoping to put words into the kiss, because he’s pretty terrible at real words.

“There,” Patrick says softly, drawing back from the kiss to rest his forehead against Pete’s. “How’s that?”

“More confusing,” Pete replies, his voice small. “More confusing that you would do that without cameras.”

“Why? You weren’t the reason there was a camera crew outside your building, were you?”

“No.”

“Right. So. The flowers are my apology, for not believing you that night. I’m sorry. I was…a little out of my head, and…yeah.” Patrick decides he doesn’t need to get into how much Pete terrifies him, how he never lets anyone inside him as far as Pete has achieved, how they’re in uncharted territory and there is no map. There’s time for terrified admissions like that later, Patrick assured himself, cowardly.

Pete takes a deep breath. It still sounds shaky, but Pete shifts away from Patrick before he can offer more comfort. He takes the flowers out of Patrick’s hands and walks over to place them carefully on his nightstand. Then he sits on the bed and clasps his hands between his knees and looks at Patrick and says, “Okay, so. I wasn’t the reason there was a camera crew outside my building. Why is there a camera crew outside _this_ building?”

“Yeah,” Patrick says awkwardly. “So. Bebe came to see me at the bar and she explained to me how awful things have been for you over the past few days—”

“Jesus,” Pete interrupts dully, “are you here out of _pity_?”

“ _No_ ,” Patrick says firmly, and doesn’t wait to be invited, he just sits on Pete’s bed. “I’m here because it turns out I don’t think I realized how much I wanted to be with you until I thought I couldn’t be with you.” Patrick huffs out a breath. Fuck, he _is_ going to have to get into all of this, because Pete’s golden eyes look thoroughly unconvinced. “You surprised me, okay? I don’t usually…let anyone make me feel that way. And, I don’t know, I think I’d like to know more about…how that could work. That’s why I’m here.”

Pete blinks slowly, then says drily, “I am no expert in how any of this works.”

“Obviously,” Patrick can’t help retorting.

And that does the trick. Pete starts laughing and then can’t seem to stop. He collapses against Patrick, boneless in his mirth, snorting and braying into Patrick’s shoulder, until abruptly the laughter collides with tears, and Pete lets out a little hiccupping sob and turns his face more fully into the collar of Patrick’s coat, breathing deep.

Patrick wants to say that he’s here now and it’s all going to be okay but that feels like the kind of hollow reassurance that’s only going to work once, so he cups his hand to the base of Pete’s skull and just holds him. He says, feeling foolish, “I don’t know, I think I might be smitten with you.”

Pete trembles against him. “No one uses that word.”

“Yeah, you’d think that, wouldn’t you?” Patrick rejoins.

Pete says fervently, “I have missed you a fucking lot this weekend. Which is stupid because there is basically no event of my life at which I have had you, so how can I miss you being here? But I am really happy to see you. Emo boy.”

“Yeah, yeah, who’s the emo boy now?” Patrick teases gently.

“Shut up,” Pete says without heat, and just rests against Patrick for a companionably silent moment.

Patrick hates to interrupt it, but he thinks they really should talk about the camera crew. “Bebe says you need a redemption arc,” he murmurs, stroking at Pete’s hair. His bun completely disintegrated at some point in the emotional drama.

“Ohhhhh,” Pete breathes softly. “The protagonist of my very own Christmas Magic movie.” Pete sits up to look at Patrick. “That’s what this is, right?”

“Basically. So I’m told. Give the people what they want: All the Christmas tropes teaching the Scrooge of an overworked CEO the true meaning of Christmas.”

“While making a Wentz family Christmas look as Christmasy as possible,” concludes Pete. “Oh, she is good. No one can say Bebe Rexha isn’t really good at her job.”

“Will it help?” Patrick asks anxiously. “I have no desire to be the star of a series of Christmas Magic movie viral videos unless it’s going to help you.”

“You don’t have to do this at all,” Pete tells him. “You can—”

“Pete. I flipped out on you for no reason—”

“You had a reason,” Pete points out.

“Yeah, but I didn’t trust you, I didn’t believe you, when—”

“You had no reason to trust me—”

“I had no reason _not_ to. And maybe that’s a lesson I’ve learned: to try to be more trusting.”

“Do not be more trusting, Patrick, most people are assholes,” Pete informs him solemnly.

Patrick chuckles. “Yeah, okay, true. But you hadn’t been an asshole, you should have earned some benefit of a doubt from me.”

Pete is silent for a moment, before saying, “I don’t know, my exes have opinions on my assholishness you might want to consider.”

“My exes think I’m a selfish prick who only cares about music, so, you know, let’s agree not to care too much about the assessments of exes. To get back to the point, I’m the reason you’re in this predicament, if I’d listened to you and just gone inside, you would never have been recorded saying what you said and you wouldn’t be dealing with all of this.”

“This isn’t your fault,” Pete says.

“It isn’t yours either. So stop being a martyr and let me help. This is how I can help, right? So this is what we’re going to do.”

Pete’s silence stretches much longer this time, and then he chokes out, “I cannot believe your exes would ever call you selfish.”

***

Every day of Pete’s life is a performance, so this shouldn’t feel radically different, but it does. The gaze of the camera feels unrelenting, and he’s unsure how to behave, how to make himself so likable that this redemption arc plan of Bebe’s works. Patrick’s being so incredible doing all of this for Pete, the least Pete can do is be some kind of halfway-charming person that everyone will consider decent enough to keep supporting his company. But he can’t just be CEO persona on camera; a businessman attitude, no matter how laidback Pete normally tries to be, will still come off as stiff and cold in a Christmas Magic movie, when he needs to be romantic and soft. The whole point of a Christmas Magic movie is to _eliminate_ CEO personas in favor of ideal Christmas-spirit-filled boyfriend material.

And, on top of having to play a part for the cameras, he’s also trying to play a more important part of Son Introducing Boyfriend to Mom. He wants to be perfect for Patrick. He’s done this before, introduced significant others to his parents. This is not the first time he’s brought someone home. Those never turned out to be fairy tales and he’s not sure why he should think any different this time. But hey. Hope or stupidity spring eternal for Pete Wentz.

Under the table, Patrick hooks his foot around Pete’s ankle, and that’s when Pete realizes he’d been desperately bouncing his leg up and down. Patrick’s touch is grounding, and out of sight of the cameras, which Pete appreciates. It feels like a straightforward Patrick-to-Pete touch, no Christmas magic fakery about it, and Pete lets himself lean into it subtly, trying to reassure himself. _Patrick is here because he wants to be_ , he reminds himself. _That’s not an act for the cameras_.

They are drinking hot cocoa out of red-and-green striped mugs stamped with _W_ monograms. In the center of the table is a pile of marshmallows, a bowl of whipped cream, and a saucer of red and green peppermint pieces. Why have simple Swiss Miss when you can go all Christmas Magic on the hot cocoa, after all? There is also a plate of snickerdoodles.

Pete’s mom says to Patrick, “Please. Have a snickerdoodle. I baked them myself. They’re Pete’s favorite.”

Patrick flickers a smile and obediently takes a cookie. “Mmm, good choice.”

“What’s your favorite?” his mom asks. “We always try to bake everyone’s favorite Christmas cookie for Christmas.”

And that’s…true. Pete’s internal sarcastic commentary skids to a halt as he realizes that, actually, his mother _does_ always bake their favorite cookies for them. Snickerdoodles for Pete, magic cookie bars for Maeve.

“I like peanut butter blossoms,” Patrick says.

“Ooh, a classic. Good choice. We don’t have enough peanut butter on our dessert table.”

Patrick says, “You really don’t have to go to any trouble.”

“It is no trouble at all,” Pete’s mother insists. “Now that you are part of the family.”

Pete lifts his eyebrows and says, “Well, that is laying it on pretty thick,” before he can stop himself. Which he probably should have. Whatever, it can be part of his redemption arc, he’s not redeemed yet.

His mother sighs. “When you show up at a family’s house for Christmas, you’re part of their family, for at least that little while. There are no strangers at a Christmas table.” His mother smiles sunnily.

It really is mind-boggling how she can speak entirely in Christmas Magic aphorisms, thinks Pete.

His mother continues, “Well, I know how you two met.”

“Yes, apparently the whole world knows how we met,” Patrick agrees drily, and nudges a snickerdoodle in front of Pete like it will dissipate his gathering storm clouds.

His mother laughs lightly and says, “Okay, so we can skip over that question. What do you do, Patrick? Aside from moonlighting as a piano player at a bar.”

Pete frowns at his mother. Way to make Patrick feel self-conscious about his job. He says, “Patrick’s a fabulous musician.”

“Yes, I got to hear you sing a little bit of something on the video you sent in to Pete,” his mother agrees.

“Not just a singer,” Pete continues staunchly. “He writes songs. He writes incredible songs.”

“They’re not… Pete’s exaggerating, they’re not that great,” Patrick protests.

“Well, this is wonderful!” his mother exclaims. “Pete writes songs, too!”

“Not really,” Pete says. “And ‘wrote.’ The correct tense is past.”

“Oh, but, honey, now you have someone to write _with_.” His mother gestures to Patrick helpfully.

“Patrick doesn’t want me writing music with him,” Pete grumbles self-consciously.

“I’d love it, actually,” Patrick interjects.

Pete looks at him in surprise. He can’t tell if this is for the benefit of the Christmas Magic movie they’re making together, or if Patrick really means that. “Really?”

“My lyrics are weak. You said it yourself.”

“Pete,” his mother chides. “That’s not how you sweet-talk a date.”

“No, he’s right,” Patrick says, “I liked him more for saying it.” Patrick turns back to Pete. “You’re a word person. I could use some help from a word person.”

Pete thinks of the journals piled all over his room, scribbled in with angsty turns of phrase that Patrick could lyrify. He’s not going to talk about that on camera, though; he’s not going to get into the fact that the therapists advised writing as a coping mechanism and so Pete spilled everything out, Pete trapped his true self in ink on paper and sent a hollow husk out into the world. And now maybe he can give Patrick that self and Patrick would take it and make it beautiful. Yeah, Pete’s not saying any of that. He croaks out, “I mean. Maybe. If you really think so.”

Patrick smiles, and feels like he means it. “I really think so.”

“Oh, this is wonderful,” his mother says enthusiastically. “The two of you can write a Christmas song together!”

***

The American public apparently most wants to see Pete Wentz fall in love while sledding.

“There isn’t any snow,” Pete says when Bebe tells them. They’re on the back terrace, away from the cameras, having a briefing on their romance. He really, really is the worst person in the universe to date.

“I know. Inconvenient. So we’re using fake snow.”

“You’re trucking in fake snow?” Patrick asks.

“No, the ski resorts have helpfully already done that for us. We’ve hired out a bunny slope for the two of you.”

“Okay,” Patrick says, and nods. “Sounds good.”

He is so calm and collected and such a _trooper_ about all this, it’s amazing to Pete. Pete says to Bebe, “So what are we supposed to talk about on our date?”

Bebe looks perplexed. “I don’t know. What do the two of you talk about on your dates? Do I need to write a script for you? Just…stay PG, you know the Christmas Magic content guidelines.”

“I’m sure the viewers want, I don’t know, to hear me open up about my struggles with depression or something,” Pete asks sarcastically.

“Don’t do that,” Patrick says, sounding aghast. “You’re not doing that on _camera_. We’re just going to talk about, like, how ridiculous sledding is as an activity.”

Pete is silent for a second. Then he says honestly, “Actually, I really like sledding, I would totally pick sledding for a date activity.”

“Really? It’s not too Christmas Magicky?” Patrick sounds surprised, and Pete doesn’t blame him.

“Shut up,” Pete tells him, embarrassed. He likes snow and snow activities. It’s his one Christmas Magic weakness. It’s humiliating, okay? “It’s, like, the only Christmas Magic thing I do,” Pete grumbles. “I’m sure I’ll hate all the other dates.”

Patrick laughs. “Very flattering, thank you.”

Bebe says, “This. Do exactly this on your date.”

But that’s easier said than done. They stand at the top of the bunny slope clinging to their separate sleds and the cameras are carefully arranged around them and it’s the least romantic thing Pete’s ever experienced.

Patrick says, as they regard the hill in front of them, “I bet none of your other sledding dates were ever like this one.”

“I’ve never had any other sledding dates,” Pete replies.

Patrick gives him an arch look. “Oh, the cameras come on and your story changes? I thought this was totally a dating activity you would pick.”

“I mean,” says Pete, “it is. It totally is. I’ve just never dated anyone who agreed with me.” Pete studiously avoids Patrick, keeps gazing down the hill.

“I see,” Patrick says slowly. “So did I fail some kind of test when I said it was ridiculous?”

Pete shakes his head. “Trust me, sparky, you have not failed in any way since the day I met you. Or not-met you, I guess.”

“You are a sweet talker,” Patrick tells him.

“I try to sometimes be okay with words,” Pete rejoins.

“Yeah? And how are you on a sled?” Patrick asks.

There’s this tone Patrick’s voice gains, this warm, silky, teasing tone. Pete really loves it, the idea that Patrick speaks to him in this way that makes Pete think of fuzzy blankets and _apres_ -ski fires roaring in chalets. “I think I’m decent,” Pete answers, trying to achieve even half an appealingly affectionate tone.

“I’ll race you down,” Patrick says.

“Well,” Pete starts, “I wouldn’t want you to—”

And then Patrick is off, kicking a spray of snow in Pete’s face.

“—hurt yourself,” Pete finishes, and then, “Son of a _bitch_ ,” which violates all sorts of Christmas Magic content guidelines, but whatever. He sends his sled careening after Patrick.

***

There are only so many times you can lug a sled up a hill before it becomes more effort than it’s worth. So at a certain point they collapse into the snow at the bottom of the hill and just stay there, heads companionably close and bodies spread out diagonally. The cameras positioned at the bottom of the hill seem like they’re likewise huddling close to them.

“I think it was a draw,” Pete says.

Patrick snorts. “I definitely beat you more times than you beat me.”

“I think you’re really bad at counting,” Pete informs him lightly.

“You keep telling yourself that, Wentz.”

“So what do you think of sledding? Still ridiculous?”

Patrick smiles up at the stars spangled over his head. He’s never been to Vermont before. It’s really pretty. Not as pretty as the man in the snow next to him but that would be impossible. But it’s a crystal clear winter night, with more stars overhead than Patrick’s ever seen before in one sky, his cheeks burn pleasantly with cold, and he’s still winded from chasing Pete up and down hills like they’re kids.

He turns his head so he can see Pete, who’s likewise looking at him. He says, “Good dating activity.”

“It’s no punk show in someone’s basement,” Pete says, “but hey, I don’t have that kind of cred to get us in.”

Patrick laughs and watches the way Pete smiles at him, pleased and smug, like making him laugh is some kind of genius achievement that he can’t believe he accomplished. Patrick thinks he could spend the rest of his life being looked at like that, like his laughter is a wonder of the world, like there’s nothing more satisfying in the universe than looking at Patrick. It’s a dizzyingly self-centered desire, and unfamiliar: Patrick’s the one who doesn’t like anyone looking at him ordinarily, who tries to hide behind instruments whenever he can. But Patrick feels like he could always handle being looked at if Pete’s the one looking at him.

And Patrick wants to kiss him so badly, and he is keenly aware of the cameras all around them, and how much he doesn’t want to kiss him on-camera.

So he says instead, voice rough with desire to do otherwise, “Should we make snow angels?”

Pete laughs. “That is the most Christmas Magic cliched thing I have ever heard of two people doing, we are _totally_ doing it.”

“See?” Patrick says, as he waves his arms and legs childishly in the snow. “Who’s emo now?”

“Still you,” Pete assures him. “Making a snow angel doesn’t make you un-emo. This is the starburst part of you.” Pete sits up, and there’s fake snow sticking in his hair, which has come undone and is curling damply to his shoulders, and he beams wildly at Patrick, that incandescent, all-in, all-out smile he has.

 _You’re the starburst_ , Patrick thinks, _and you don’t even know it_. “Maybe it’s the starburst part of _you_ ,” he suggests, sprawled on his back and looking up at Pete as he leans over him.

Pete’s smile fades slowly, like he’s absorbing that. Then he says hoarsely, “You’re--” and then he cuts himself off and looks at the cameras all around them. He looks back at Patrick and clears his throat and says, “Anyway, you make a good snow angel, emo boy.”

***

Their next scheduled stop is some kind of family dinner. “Cozy” and “festive” were the words Bebe used to describe it. Pete wants nothing to do with it. He’s got Patrick hoodwinked into thinking he’s some kind of starburst-y guy, he doesn’t want him talking to his father about what a disappointment Pete is as a person generally and as a son specifically. So Pete nods his head as Bebe explains what’s going to happen when they get back to the house and then he gets in the driver’s seat of his car with every intention of meeting the camera crew back at the house. Patrick gets in the passenger seat, pulling his gloves off with his teeth and reaching his hands eagerly toward the heat Pete blasts on.

Pete puts the car in drive and starts driving and drums his fingers on the steering wheel and wishes he could think of some way to escape. “Do you know how to ski?” he asks suddenly.

“No,” Patrick answers.

“Do you want to learn?” Pete asks.

“You’re one of Those People, aren’t you?”

Pete considers the question. “Rich people?”

Patrick laughs. “No. Although you are that, too. Athletic People.”

Pete can hear the capital letters. “I don’t know. Am I?”

“Yes. I can tell. You say ‘want to learn to ski?’ like I’m not going to break my leg in the effort.”

“You’re not going to break your leg. I won’t let you break your leg. I’m a good ski teacher,” Pete defends himself.

“Have you ever taught anyone how to ski before?”

“I am going to teach you how to ski,” Pete says confidently, without answering the question.

Patrick snorts and says, “Okay, Wentz,” in that softly skeptical tone of voice that Pete feels belongs to him and he likes that. A softening of skepticism around him is just what he needs. Why does Patrick have just the best way of speaking to him at all times?

And Pete will do anything in the fucking universe not to lose that.

“Want to start now?” Pete asks casually.

“Start what now?”

“Learning how to ski.”

Patrick looks around them. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Patrick, it’s five o’clock.”

“Well, it _feels_ like the middle of the night. It’s so _dark_. How would I see anything? I’m definitely going to break my leg.”

“Night skiing exists, you know. And I know the ski resort operators around here. I could probably get them to close down a mountain for us, if you wanted me to.”

“No, I don’t want you to do that. What’s this about? What’s up?”

“Nothing’s up,” Pete lies. “I just really love skiing.”

“Stop the car,” Patrick says.

“What?”

“Stop the car.”

“I can’t just stop the car, the roads are narrow and, as you just pointed out, dark.”

“Pull over up there.” Patrick points.

“In the parking lot of the Christmas tree farm?” Pete checks disbelievingly.

“Yes. What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s...a little Christmas Magicky, isn’t it?”

“Shut up and pull into the fucking parking lot,” Patrick says in exasperation. 

Pete pulls into the parking lot.

It’s busy, people milling all around, calling to each other, laughing. It is _very_ fucking Christmas Magicky, so Pete scowls out the windshield.

Patrick comments, “All these people are here getting a Christmas tree the day before Christmas Eve?”

“It’s a whole stupid winter carnival event festival thing,” Pete explains, and gestures. “They’re all drinking hot cocoa and caroling and looking at arts and crafts and, you know, all that Christmas shit.”

Patrick considers, looking out at the crowd. Then he says, “We should do this.”

Pete looks at him. “What?”

“Let’s go to the Christmas carnival thing,” says Patrick.

“We’re supposed to have dinner with my parents.”

“The prospect of which put you in a foul mood. So let’s ditch it. You were the one who just proposed night skiing.”

“Yeah, night skiing is…not a winter carnival.”

“Come on, I’m going to buy you one of those blinking Santa hats,” says Patrick, and gets out of the car.

***

The truth is that, well, Pete Wentz, King of Christmas Magic or whatever the fuck, has never actually been to one of these Christmas festival things. Patrick buys him hot cocoa and a necklace of glow-in-the-dark holly sprigs and holds his hand while they stroll along booths selling various arts and crafts, and it smells like pine tree and cinnamon and smoke from the fires periodically crackling away, and the night air is so crystal clear with cold that laughter rings in it like bells and everyone’s breath sends up puffs of joy, and Pete is…a little overwhelmed. And bewildered.

“So this is Christmas,” he remarks thoughtfully, watching the throngs of people wander through festive greenery along twinkling paths. It feels so remote to him, this particular sort of Christmasy world, and it’s ironic that probably most of these people identify his company with what they’re doing right now.

“A type of Christmas, anyway,” Patrick agrees.

And Pete remembers that not everything is about him. He says, “How old were you when your parents divorced?”

“Seven,” Patrick says. “And there wasn’t really any Christmas after that. I mean, as a kid, you kind of stop believing in Santa when Santa starts getting competitive between houses. You know, my mom saying things like, ‘Bet Santa didn’t bring anything this nice to your dad’s house, huh?’ Kind of undercut the magic.”

Pete winces. “Ouch,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago,” says Patrick.

“No such thing,” Pete says. “Ancient history is a myth. Ancient history is everything we are.”

“Maybe,” says Patrick.

Pete frowns. “You don’t agree? You and I are talking to each other at this very moment because of the ancient history of your parents’ divorce causing you to work on Christmas Eve. This moment right here that we’re having is all ancient history.”

“I see what you’re saying,” says Patrick, as they continue milling their way through the crowd, past the crowded craft booths, around the throngs of people in line for roasted chestnuts. “But this moment right here is really the culmination of a series of choices _we_ both made. Choices to be here, with each other, now. Sure, I was playing in a bar on Christmas Eve because I’m a child of divorce, but that’s not why I agreed to meet you for a drink, or why I kept saying yes to dates, or why I’m here in Vermont. There’s some ancient history in us, but I like to think that most of us is just _us_.”

Pete considers this, sipping on his hot chocolate. And then he admits, “Maybe you.”

“Hmm?”

“Maybe you are mostly yourself. You seem like you… You seem like you’re chasing your dream, trying to be exactly who you want to be.”

Patrick snorts. “You have got me all wrong.”

“What? Your dream isn’t music?”

“I don’t know. I guess. Yes. It’s complicated, I guess.” Patrick looks frustrated. “I mean, my mother would tell you I’m just wasting my life, the same way my father wasted his life. Chasing a dream, sure, that’s never going to amount to anything.”

“Is giving up on your dream and settling down to a life you don’t even want to live amounting to something?” Pete asks seriously. He’s never really understood that theory, even as he implemented it in his own life. “I don’t know if it’s all it’s cracked up to be.”

Patrick makes a noncommittal sound.

Pete steals a glance over at him as they keep walking. His lush lower lip is caught between his teeth thoughtfully. Look what he’s done, made Patrick all reflective and sad. “I’m so sorry,” Pete says, “this is the fucking worst date.” Why can’t he just be the kind of date who people have fun with, what is _wrong_ with him?

But Patrick smiles a little and looks over at him with such visible warmth that Pete gets that cozy _apres_ -ski feeling again and feels better. “You’re not the worst date, I’ve been on the worst dates, believe me. I once had a guy hit on the waitress while on a date with me. Got her number and everything. You haven’t done that yet.”

There’s a moment of silence. “Well, that’s a pretty low bar but I’m happy to have cleared it,” remarks Pete.

“See, you’re doing okay.” Patrick bumps their shoulders together as they walk.

“I didn’t think I’d end up, I don’t know, _here_ ,” says Pete, morosely.

“At a Christmas carnival thing with some random loser piano player you met at a pretentious dive bar?”

Pete says, “You are not a loser.”

Patrick nudges his shoulder again. “Right back at you, Wentz.”

Pete shakes his head and huffs out a breath and looks over at Patrick. He’s wearing blinking snowmen around his neck. How can you not find a man with blinking snowmen around his neck impossibly sweet and charming. Pete says, “Okay, okay, point taken.”

They’ve reached the Christmas tree lots now, the crafts and food booths all behind them. The Christmas tree lot is much less crowded, the sounds seem muted by the heaviness of the pine scent all around them. Most people already have their trees. These are the picked-over remnants, with signs over their heads that proclaim them to be half-off.

Pete’s heartstrings twinge a little bit. These are the cast-off trees, the ones that nobody wanted, the ones somebody needs to scoop in and grab so they feel loved. Okay, maybe he’s projecting too much onto a pine tree that’s been cut down in the heart of its life to be pressed into brief service as some harbinger of joy and love -- ‘tis the fucking season.

Pete hears himself saying, “Do you want to get a Christmas tree with me?”

“A Christmas tree? Don’t you already have a Christmas tree?”

“We have, like, fifteen perfectly manicured twelve-foot trees from New Brunswick or something.” Pete looks at Patrick. “Let’s get a Christmas tree together.” 

After a moment, Patrick says, “Okay.” 

***

“No, I think—No, it definitely has to be taller than you, Pete—”

“Fuck you,” Pete rejoins good-naturedly, “you’re no hulking giant over there, you know.”

“I’m not claiming to be, but I’m not the one picking out five-foot-tall Christmas trees.”

“They’re cute,” Pete says. “Like you. Cute little starburst packages. Emo ones.”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “Trees can’t be emo.”

“Short trees are emo because of their shortness. They’re emo about being short.”

“Okay,” Patrick drawls.

“Don’t even question me, I know everything about Christmas, I am the King of Christmas, I speak the language of pine trees and jingle bells.”

“Do you speak the language of my middle finger?” Patrick asks.

“Patrick,” Pete chides him playfully, “there are _children_ around here.” Pete grins at him, then wanders over to look at taller trees. “How about this one? It’s taller than me.”

“By, like, two inches.”

“You requested a tree that’s taller than me, here we have one. Taller, still cute enough to be an emo starburst. Come and hold it so I can inspect how it looks from afar.”

Patrick obediently holds the tree for Pete. Patrick obediently turns it this way and that.

“It’s perfect,” Pete eventually declares. “And the tree’s not so bad, either.”

“Ha ha,” Patrick says, feeling the blush on his face, but he’s so pink from the cold by now that hopefully it’s not that obvious. “Let’s go buy it.”

“Do you like it?” Pete asks anxiously. “I don’t want to get it if you don’t like it. Do you want something taller?”

Patrick looks at Pete. Patrick says, “No, I don’t want something taller. Also, the tree is okay, too.”

Pete bursts into startled, delighted laughter, and Patrick is pleased with himself as he hoists the tree over to the checkout stand, where they give it a fresh cut and tuck it into a net and ask if they need help getting it on their car.

“Oh, dear,” Pete says. “Um.”

The teenager working the checkout stand looks between them.

“The tree was kind of a spontaneous purchase,” Pete admits.

“So?” says the kid.

“He’s trying to say he’s got this tiny, ridiculous sports car,” Patrick says, and then starts laughing.

“Don’t laugh at my car!” Pete protests. “We’re totally going to make the tree fit, it’ll be fine.”

“Cool, dude,” says the kid, shrugging. He definitely doesn’t care.

“I never carry cash,” Pete says suddenly. “Why do I never carry cash?”

“Oh, we can’t take tips,” the kid says.

“No, for the Christmas gift collection.” Pete nods toward the little jar on the table labeled _Gifts for Local Families!_ Pete slides his scarf out from around his neck and hands it to the kid. “It’s cashmere, make sure you get your money’s worth it for it.”

“Okay,” blinks the kid, confused.

Pete turns back toward Patrick and says immediately, “What? Don’t look at me like that.”

“I want you to know something,” Patrick says seriously.

“Let’s just get the tree in the car,” Pete replies, clearly trying to distract Patrick. He grabs the tree and starts dragging it into the parking lot.

“You’re more than one daisy,” Patrick continues, following him, picking up the tree’s trunk so it’s not dragging anymore.

“More than one daisy?” Pete throws over his shoulder, sounding confused.

“In your bouquet. You’re not a whole bouquet of emo and a single daisy. You’ve got more starburst to you than you give yourself credit for. You’re more than one daisy.”

There’s a moment of silence, then Pete says jovially, “Well. That’s not something anyone’s said to me before.”

The tone doesn’t disguise Pete’s emotion at all but Patrick lets him get away with it. “That’s because you know a lot of assholes,” Patrick rejoins lightly.

Pete laughs.

They’ve reached his tiny car by now, with its nonexistent backseat and fictional trunk. Patrick says, “Do you want to tie it to the roof? I mean, it’ll probably destroy the paint job, but our only other option is for me to sit with the tree on my lap hanging out the window.”

“Hmm,” says Pete. “The car has a sunroof.”

And that is how Patrick finds himself sitting in the passenger seat of a very expensive sports car, balancing a tree between his legs, the top of which is poking out of the sunroof.

Pete says to him, slanting a look at him as he drives, “You know. It’s kind of phallic.”

Patrick gives him a look. “Given the car you drive, I’d be very surprised if your dick was anywhere near big enough to justify that comparison.”

Pete laughs. “That’s very mean, Patrick, and also you have no idea how wrong you are about the size of my dick, sparky.”

“Uh-huh,” says Patrick drily. “Don’t oversell yourself too much.”

Pete laughs again. “The idea that you’re the love interest in a Christmas Magic movie is _hilarious_.”

“I’m not a love interest in a Christmas Magic movie,” Patrick corrects him, “I’m just _your_ love interest.”

Pete smiles at him, looking a little quizzical, like he’s not sure how they ended up here but he’s willing to take it.

Speaking of this whole movie thing, though. “Listen. The dinner with your parents. I think it was just meant to be another fluff piece. I’m sure there wasn’t going to be any drama. I’m sure your parents wouldn’t be mean to you.”

“My parents are never really mean to me, Patrick,” Pete sighs. “It wouldn’t just be the fact that we’re on camera, they’re never really mean. They love me very much. I know that. We just don’t always agree on what love looks like, I guess. Or on what would be best for me. Or on what would be best for _them_. I don’t know. They’re never mean to me, and that makes it worse. They have this tone of voice they use, this ‘oh, Pete’ tone of voice. ‘Oh, Pete. Done it again. Our silly, foolish, disappointment of a son. Go hide in your room while we clean up your mess.’ I hate that tone of voice.”

“I just can’t imagine you’re as disappointing as you think you are in your head,” Patrick says honestly.

Pete’s look is arch and knowing. “Patrick, you are here right now because I am in the process of destroying our family company.”

“No, I’m here right now because I like you.”

“Patrick,” Pete sighs, shaking his head and focusing closely on the road.

“ _I’m_ a disappointment as a son, okay? I don’t even go home for Christmas. At least you still do that. I don’t have any kind of degree, I never went to college, I barely graduated from high school. I have a patchwork of jobs that barely pay me enough to survive and waste all of my time on music that’s never really gotten me anywhere. It kind of puts you in perspective.”

“I don’t know, I think my parents would think I was cool if I was a musical genius instead of just _really bad_ at everything I try to do.”

“You’re not really bad at everything you do. You’re an excellent kisser. With, apparently, a really big dick. So. You know.”

He’s rewarded with a laugh. “I mean,” says Pete. “I’m alright in bed.”

“Just alright?”

“Someone just told me not to oversell myself too much, I think,” says Pete, and puts the car in park outside the family mansion and looks at Patrick. “Ready to make our entrance?”

“Yes,” Patrick answers. “Are you?”

“I think I could make any entrance if I got to do it with you,” Pete replies, and then gets out of the car.

Together they manage to wrestle the tree out of the car, with Patrick thoroughly covered in sap by the end of it. Pete thinks this is hilarious, the way Patrick’s hair is sticky with the stuff.

“It’s, like, extra-festive,” Pete is saying as they carry the tree up the porch steps. “It’s so Christmas magic, I’m dying. You’ve even got pine needles in it.”

“I hope I’m not allergic to sap,” Patrick says, trying to swipe a sticky hand through his hair.

The front door opens before they can reach it, and Pete says to whoever’s standing in the doorway, “I know, we’re late, but look! We got a Christmas tree!”

“Where did you get that?” a male voice asks incredulously. “It’s like a Bonsai Christmas tree.”

“It’s the day before Christmas Eve, there wasn’t a huge selection,” Pete explains. They’re now standing in the entrance hall, and Patrick puts his half of the tree down gratefully. The front hall is crowded with the camera crew, and Pete’s mother, and a man Patrick has to assume is Pete’s father. “Some lights, a few ornaments, and this tree will be gorgeous. Christmas magic, am I right?”

“On the subject of Christmas magic,” Pete’s mother says.

“Just so you know,” Pete’s father adds, “ _we_ didn’t have anything to do with this. They just showed up.”

“We assume you know, Patrick?” Pete’s mother finishes.

Patrick has no idea what they’re talking about. “Know what?”

“That your parents are here,” says Pete’s mother.

And Patrick says, “ _What?_ ”

***

Patrick is out on the back terrace with his parents, and Pete is trying not to spy through the window while hissing at Bebe, “How did you not warn him that his _parents_ were showing up?”

“I tried to,” Bebe hisses back. “Neither one of you picks up your phones!”

His phone is very deliberately off. Oops. “We were…ignoring you,” Pete admits.

“Yeah, you’ve got to stop doing that,” says Bebe. “I really am only trying to help you, you know.”

She maybe has a point. “Well, I was trying to, I don’t know—” Pete tries to defend himself.

“Hide?” suggests Bebe.

Yes. Pete says, “You said it was dinner with _my_ parents, you didn’t say anything about _his_ parents.”

“His parents weren’t supposed to be here! They just showed up! I asked him if we could interview them for, you know, the movie we’re making here. Patrick said they’d never want to be interviewed but we could totally make his excuses for why he couldn’t spend Christmas with them. So I called them up and explained what was going on and I guess later they called my assistant and got all the information about where we are now because my assistant thought I must have approved them coming and, well, here they are.”

“It’s alright,” Pete’s mom says.

“It’s not alright,” Pete snaps. “Patrick is already doing _all this_ for me, and now he has to deal with his parents on top of it.”

“Yes,” Pete’s dad says drily. “Because parents are so inconvenient to have to deal with.”

“You know what I mean,” Pete says impatiently. “His parents are divorced, they don’t get along, it’s a whole _thing_.”

“Well.” His father shrugs. “Just got to make the most of it now. Help me set this tree up.” He lugs the tree over to a miraculously unoccupied corner of the great room.

“We don’t need to set it up,” Pete says awkwardly. The tiny tree looks ridiculous in a room of this scale, in the middle of the forest of all the other epic, perfectly shaped Christmas trees in the room.

“Of course we do,” his mother says. “You and Patrick chose it.”

“And you don’t like Christmas,” his father says, propping the tree up. “So this is a noteworthy event, you coming home with a Christmas tree. Talk about Christmas magic.”

“I…I like Christmas,” says Pete feebly.

His mother and father both give him a look.

“I mean,” Pete tries, and falters, because, well, he _doesn’t_ like Christmas, and he knows that makes him weird and disappointing, like usual. “Never mind,” he sighs.

“Do we have another Christmas tree stand?” his dad asks his mom.

“Somewhere we must. Probably in the basement.”

“I’ll go down and look,” his dad says, and ambles off.

And for the first time, Pete realizes he’s in the great room with his mother alone. Even Bebe’s left. He says, “Where are the cameras?”

“We refused to let them film dinner,” his mother answers. “Not that you showed up to dinner.”

“We—I—Why?”

“Because, Pete. We can’t have every interaction with your boyfriend be on film. We’d like to get to know who he is without a camera in his face.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” says Pete automatically.

“Fine. Whatever you young people call it these days.” His mom waves her hand around dismissively.

“No, I mean.” Pete pauses, confused. “We’re just. You know.” _Taking it slow_ didn’t seem right, considering now Patrick was at his house for Christmas. Being filmed for it. “I don’t know,” Pete says, staring at their little tree. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Well,” his mother remarks. “I admit you have made it complicated. But that’s a very you thing, isn’t it?”

“I know,” Pete grumbles, pushing his hands into his hair, “I make a mess of everything.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call this a mess,” his mother surprises him by saying. “It’s just different. That’s all I meant. You’ve never liked doing things the usual way. You’re happiest when you’re turned all around. Aren’t you?”

Pete stares at his mother, considering. “I…guess?”

His father arrives back in the room, brandishing a cheap, plastic tree stand. “Aha! I didn’t even have to look very hard, I tripped right over it at the bottom of the stairs. And luckily, you’ve picked out a tiny tree, so it doesn’t need a very sturdy stand. Come over here and help me.”

Pete goes over to hold the tree, pretending he knows what he’s doing, watching his father on the floor. Probably Pete should be the one on the floor, his father is too old for this, but Pete doesn’t know how to put a tree in a stand, really. “I felt bad for it. The trees were all picked over and nobody wants the little one.”

“Of course you felt bad for it,” his father says, nudging the trunk into the stand. “You’ve always been like that. You would never let your mother throw away any of the broken ornaments when you were a kid. You felt bad for them.”

“I still have them in a box,” his mother remarks.

Pete looks at her, startled. “Wait, you kept them?”

She looks bewildered. “Of course I kept them. You asked me to.”

“They were never out on any of the trees.”

“You can’t put shattered ornaments on a tree, Pete, someone would get hurt.”

“I thought you threw them out.”

“Pete.” His mother sounds exasperated. “Why would I do that after you asked me not to?”

He doesn’t have a good answer to that. _Because I just assumed the worst?_ That’s the best he can come up with.

Bebe clears her throat, knocking on the doorjamb since there is no door to the great room. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“Quite alright, Bebe,” his father says genially. He’s always been a gallant kind of boss, Pete thinks. “We are just getting Pete and Patrick’s tree set up.”

“Looks good,” Bebe says. “Cute tree. I thought we should talk. Because I don’t think anyone’s read my dossier.”

“Nobody’s read your dossier,” Pete agrees. He doesn’t even know where his goddamn dossier _is_.

His parents say in unison, “We read the dossier.”

Of course they fucking did. Pete sighs, as his father stands up.

“Let go,” his father says, “we’ll see if it’s straight.”

Pete lets go, and the tree magically stays standing.

“Great. We’ll decorate it tomorrow,” his father decides. “Bebe, you said you wanted a tree-trimming for the cameras, right?”

“There’s always a tree-trimming scene,” Bebe agrees. “As for the next scene.”

“Gingerbread houses,” his mother says. “They’re all set up in the kitchen.”

“Yes. We’ve managed to get a couple more, now that Patrick’s parents are here.”

“Gingerbread houses?” Pete echoes.

“Second-most vote-getter,” Bebe explains. “For a Christmas trope date.”

“Look,” Pete says, “I don’t know if Patrick’s going to be in the mood to—I mean, I’m not going to make him go through with all of this if he doesn’t want to. This is… He doesn’t have to.”

There’s a moment of silence.

Bebe says, “He kind of has to.”

Pete sighs. “Is it actually helping?”

Bebe hands Pete her phone. It’s a YouTube video, Pete flinging himself unabashedly into Patrick’s arms. Pete winces a little at the rawness of his action, but finds himself transfixed by the way Patrick folds him in and ducks down to whisper in his ear. Maybe it’s up on YouTube, but it feels genuinely intimate and private. It’s a thousand times better than any Christmas Magic movie could ever have achieved.

“More people have watched that than watched the original video,” Bebe says.

“It’s not just helping,” adds his father. “Everything is _up_ : web traffic, viewing numbers, last-minute store sales.”

“You were the feel-good story on the NBC Evening News tonight,” Bebe finishes.

This is, like, the first actual _good_ thing he’s ever done for the company. _This_.

Pete takes a shaky breath and gives Bebe back her phone. “If Patrick doesn’t want to, I’m not going to make him.”

“Of course,” Bebe agrees.

But Pete can hear everyone in the room thinking how much they need Patrick to want to.

***

“What are you _doing_ here?” Patrick demands.

“ _Patrick_ ,” his mother says. “Look at where we _are_. What are _you_ doing here?”

Which is possibly a fair question. Patrick says, “I’m. Like. It’s very complicated.”

“We know,” his father says. “Bebe explained everything to us. How much are they paying you?”

“They’re not—they’re not _paying_ me. Look, you need to go.”

“We’re not _going_ ,” his mother says. “Are you kidding me? This was the first interesting thing I’ve gotten to post on Facebook in _forever_. Everyone’s so jealous, everyone watches Christmas Magic movies all season, and now I’m going to be in one! This is incredible!”

His mother’s eyes are shining with joy. Patrick’s never seen his mother shine with joy because of _him_ before. He says falteringly, “No. No, that’s not what this is. It’s not really a movie, it’s like… It’s like my life, with cameras. It’s… It’s a lot and I can’t have the two of you here while I’m trying to deal with it.”

“That’s not very nice, Patrick,” his father says disapprovingly. “You just heard your mother say how much this means to her.”

That is the first time Patrick’s ever heard his father talk about his mother without cursing. “Okay, hang on, since when do the two of you even talk, never mind…do whatever this is?”

“That was all a long time ago,” his mother says.

“Water under the bridge,” his father agrees.

Patrick stares at them. “Water under the fucking _bridge_? You made all of our lives hell sniping at each other our entire childhoods, and now you’re just like, ‘water under the bridge’?”

“I think you’re being a little dramatic,” his mother says. “I guess it’s okay for the sake of the movie.”

“I am _not_ making it dramatic for the sake of the movie,” Patrick clips out. “In fact, I am trying very hard to not have any of this drama be in the movie. This is for Pete, so that I can help him save his company. This isn’t for us to air our dirty laundry on national television.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says his father. “What dirty laundry? What could you even have to say?”

Patrick stares at them. Patrick looks around the terrace. “Is this still being filmed somehow? Are we on camera right now? What is even happening?”

“Here’s what’s happening,” his mother says. “Have you taken a look at this place? This guy, whoever it is, has got money. Don’t fuck this one up.”

“Pete,” Patrick says icily. “‘This guy’ is named Pete.”

“Yeah, right, exactly, Pete.”

“His parents seem like nice people,” his father remarks. 

Patrick, aghast, suddenly wonders how long his parents have been here. “What have you been saying to his parents?”

“Nothing but good things,” his mother says soothingly.

“She was even complimentary about your music,” his father adds drily, “which God knows she never managed when we were married.”

Patrick’s mother rolls his eyes. “Oh, please,” she scoffs.

“There we go,” Patrick says. “Much more like the parental interactions I know and love.”

“Don’t worry, I was really supportive of your _art_.” The word is heavy with that faint sarcasm his mother always has when she talks about his music. 

“And I may have pretended you did a little better in high school than you did, these people seem like they would care about grades and shit, but who hasn’t pretended they did better in high school, eh, sport?” His father does this awkward thing where he punches Patrick’s shoulder, like that’s a thing they do.

Patrick says, “Ow.”

“Oh, come on, that didn’t hurt.”

“Don’t do that again. In fact, don’t do any of this ever again. You’re going to suddenly remember that you need to get home and—”

“But they’ve already invited us to stay for Christmas,” says his mother.

“For _Christmas_? No, no, you can’t stay for Christmas, you need to leave tonight. Who spends Christmas with perfect strangers? Don’t be ridiculous.”

His mother frowns. “ _You’re_ spending Christmas with them. Them instead of us.”

“I never spend Christmas with you,” Patrick points out.

“ _I know_ ,” says his mother.

“I don’t spend Christmas with you because if I spend Christmas with you, _he_ calls me up to tell me all about what an ungrateful son I am after he kept paying child support while you spent the checks on your hair and your nails.”

His mother makes a shocked sound at his father.

His father says, “Well, I mean.”

“You were always behind with the child support,” his mother snaps, “because your _music_ never made any _money_.”

“And I don’t spend Christmas with _you_ ,” Patrick continues, pointing to his father, “because if I spend Christmas with you, _she_ calls me up to remind me how you abandoned the family and didn’t care about your children as much as you cared about your music and your dick.”

“ _What_?” says his father.

“Well, I mean,” rejoins his mother mockingly.

“So,” Patrick concludes, “you’re absolutely right, I do not spend Christmas with you. And now it’s time to—”

Someone clears their throat, and Patrick looks over his shoulder to find Pete standing sheepishly on the terrace with them. “Um,” Pete says. “Sorry.”

“Nope.” Patrick shakes his head. “Don’t be sorry. My parents were just leaving.”

“Oh, okay,” Pete says brightly. “Cool. Well. It was really nice to meet you—”

“Leaving to go do the gingerbread houses,” Patrick’s mother says gaily, and sails past him into the house.

“The what?” Patrick echoes blankly.

“Nice place you’ve got here, Trevor,” Patrick’s father says, shaking Pete’s hand.

“Uh, it’s Pete,” says Pete.

“Right. Pete. Sorry.” He steps past Pete into the house.

Pete looks at Patrick. “Did you used to date a Trevor?”

“I’m going to kill them,” Patrick says.

“Please don’t,” says Pete.

“No, I am. They heard ‘Christmas Magic’ and they saw dollar signs and now they’re like vultures and I’m so sorry.”

“Do _not_ apologize. Are you serious? You’re here doing me a massive favor and look what you’ve gotten for it. I feel awful about all of this.”

“It’s not your fault,” says Patrick.

“I still feel awful,” Pete replies. “I think you should go back to Chicago.”

Patrick, distracted by the disaster of his parents’ _existence_ , is startled by how completely this throws him for a loop. He…emphatically does not want to go back to Chicago. He wants to stay here with Pete, even with everything going on, and he didn’t know it so clearly until this moment. He says, “You want me to go back to Chicago?”

“No, I don’t _want_ you to go anywhere. I want you to stay right here, with me, so I don’t have to go through the misery of Christmas by myself. But that’s very selfish of me, and you should go back to Chicago and be done with this whole mess I’ve made for us.”

Patrick considers. Then Patrick says lightly, “You coward, you want me to face my disappointed parents all alone?”

“Never,” Pete says quickly. “That’s not what I meant. I—”

“What are we doing next? Decorating gingerbread houses?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Then that’s what we’re doing. Decorating gingerbread houses.” Patrick closes the distance between him and Pete, takes his hand firmly. “Can we just make a deal that we’re both just going to ignore each other’s parents?”

“Can we make a deal that I’m going to steal us a bottle of liquor and we’re going to drink heavily in my room when this is over?” asks Pete.

“Yes,” agrees Patrick. “Excellent deal.”

***

Pete and Patrick stand with cameras trained on them and face a heap of gingerbread pieces, a pile of frosting, and a variety of gumdrops and M&Ms and licorice. On the other side of the kitchen, more cameras are trained on their parents. Patrick is watching them with dread. 

Patrick says, “What _kind_ of liquor?”

Pete’s lips twitch with amusement. He says, “Good liquor.”

Patrick takes a deep breath and says, “Okay.” Then he pokes at the gingerbread pieces. “Have you ever made a gingerbread house before?”

“Ours were always professionally done.” Pete grabs some M&Ms, tosses them into his mouth. “Have you?”

“I am sure my parents are making up a heartwarming story right now about all the gingerbread houses we used to make together, but the answer is no, I have never done one of these before. Oh, I think this must be the chimney, right?” Patrick holds a piece up.

“Oh, yeah.” Pete takes it out of Patrick’s hand and says, “That’s not very important, then,” and bites the top of it. 

“Hang on, how is Santa getting down the chimney if you ate the chimney?” Patrick asks.

“You know what I just realized?” says Pete thoughtfully. “I don’t like gingerbread.”

Patrick laughs and goes back to poking at the pile of gingerbread pieces.

“Do you like gingerbread?” Pete asks him.

“I don’t even know. I don’t mind ginger, so I guess I like it. I’m not trying any because we’re supposed to be making a house here.”

“You can try the chimney,” Pete suggests, and promptly clamps what’s left of it between his teeth, so it’s extending outward a bit for Patrick to bite. The bite, of course, will take him in close proximity to Pete’s lips.

Patrick looks at him, looks at the positioned chimney, and gives him a smile that provokes a little zing of reaction in all of Pete’s nerve endings. Patrick’s got a cherubic smile that he can turn wicked and the way Patrick is everything all at once makes Pete’s mouth water.

Patrick leans forward and nibbles at the end of the chimney, mumbles, “Yeah, it’s good, I like gingerbread,” and then keeps nibbling all the way up until, just shy of Pete’s lips, he murmurs, “No kissing in a Christmas Magic movie until the very end.” Then he shifts to whisper directly into Pete’s ear, “And absolutely no sex, of course.”

Pete sways on his feet, light-headed, and by the time he manages to flutter his eyes open, Patrick has settled calmly into gingerbread-house construction mode, like nothing just happened. If it weren’t for the self-satisfied tilt to Patrick’s smile, Pete could have supposed he’d fantasized the whole thing.

Patrick says, “Here, pipe some of that glue frosting stuff between these two sections.”

Pete grabs the frosting bag and obeys blindly, saying, “You’re really into, like, a lot a lot of foreplay.”

Patrick chuckles, watching Pete’s gluing job. “I don’t know. Am I? I just…” Patrick’s eyes flicker to the cameras trained on them, and then he says, “Oh, fuck it, whatever. It’s been a while since I felt like I had something to really look forward to. It’s been a while since I felt like I just wanted to…savor every second of it.”

Pete, glue forgotten, stares at him. “Really?” he says.

“Can we not get into my dating drought with all the cameras watching us? Just finish gluing.”

“No, I just mean…I look forward to you, too.”

Patrick looks at him, and his smile is so soft and sweet, the _apres_ -ski angel smile that Pete can’t believe actually exists on a human being. Patrick says, “It’s been a while since I enjoyed this part of it. So…thanks for that, I suppose.”

“I always _want_ to enjoy this part of it,” Pete replies, “but I think this is the first time I ever really have. So, thanks for _that_.”

“I don’t think it’s like this very much,” Patrick remarks, placing more pieces of gingerbread into whatever arrangement he’s working on. “I think popular culture makes us think it’s like this more than it actually is.”

“I don’t know,” Pete says, marveling at Patrick, next to him, making a gingerbread house. “I guess you only need it to happen once, right?”

Patrick flickers a glance at him. “Spoken like the CEO of Christmas Magic,” he teases.

“You _are_ very sexy with that gingerbread house,” Pete says. “Turns out Christmas Magic movies are onto something with gingerbread house construction, who knew?”

Patrick is the most delicious shade of pink. “Stop,” he says.

“Very sexy builder, you are. Architecture is hot.”

“I hope they broadcast all of this live on the internet so everyone can see how terrible you are at flirting,” says Patrick.

“I am the _best_ at flirting, do not even slander me like that.”

“Can you help me tile the roof, please?” Patrick holds up some gumdrops.

“I can absolutely help you tile the roof, baby.”

“That’s not a euphemism.”

“Oh, it’s a euphemism, baby.”

“You can’t just make everything into a euphemism by adding ‘baby’ to the end of it.”

“You’re laughing.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“You’re totally laughing, you think I’m very funny and cute.”

“Yeah, do you want to go to prom with me?” asks Patrick archly.

“Totally.”

“You were fucking, like, prom king, weren’t you?” jokes Patrick.

Pete laughs because he knows he’s supposed to, then says, “No, actually, I didn’t go to my prom. I…” Pete tries to think of how to put into words the way he’d felt at that point in his life. “I wasn’t in the mood for it,” he decides captures it the most accurately he wants to say with all these cameras on him.

Patrick puts a gumdrop on his roof and doesn’t pursue that further, and really, Pete could not be any more in love with Patrick, he thinks. Patrick says, “Well, I did not go to mine because I was busy playing a gig.”

Pete tries to imagine seventeen-year-old Patrick playing a gig somewhere. “Really? Where?”

“It was the opening of a new carwash.”

Pete laughs. “It was a what?”

“Look, you take what you can get, okay?”

“Did they pay you in carwashes? Please tell me that there’s someplace in suburban Chicago where you have free carwashes for life.”

“You’ll have to marry me to get that benefit,” Patrick says, and it’s not even a moment of awkwardness there.

Pete just says, “Then I guess we’re getting married,” and Patrick just smiles at him, and Pete is so hopeless, just, _so hopeless_.

Patrick says, “Should we make the door out of Twizzlers?” so they do.

*** 

Patrick, impossibly, in spite of everything, had a really nice evening. He cannot remember the last time he had a nice evening with both of his parents in the same room together. He was maybe five years old. Or four. It was a long time ago, is the point. But he had a good time making a ramshackle gingerbread house with Pete. Pete has a well-developed sense of fun silliness and Patrick appreciates that. It’s surprisingly difficult to find someone who doesn’t think they should have grown out of that years ago. Pete is _ridiculous_ , and if you’d asked Patrick what he was looking for in a mate, he might not have used that word, but now it’s really high on his list. Pete is ridiculous and it’s adorable and hot and Patrick didn’t mind his parents squabbling so thoroughly that their gingerbread house was a literal pile of rubble, and didn’t mind that next to it Pete’s parents managed to construct the goddamn Buckingham Palace of gingerbread houses. Patrick minded nothing because he was standing next to Pete.

Talk about Christmas magic.

 _How’s it going with your hk?????_ Vicky texts, the phone buzzing next to him on the bed in the palatial bedroom he’s been given.

Patrick doesn’t even know how to put it into words. Astonishing? Amazing? He didn’t think he could be so in love with another human being? He didn’t think stuff like this even happened? He texts back, _Really good_.

 _Oh Patrick coming from you that is head over heels language!!!!!_ Followed by a heart-eyes emoji.

Patrick rolls his eyes and is about to text back when Pete texts him instead.

 _Come to my room_. _Ive got really excellent bourbon here._

_Bourbon?_ Patrick texts back, smiling. _Are you 87 years old?_

_Shut up you want me to get you pabst blue ribbon????_ Is the response. 

Patrick laughs out loud. He can’t help it. He texts back, _I have no idea where your room is, this house is a fucking castle._

_Step outside your bedroom and look to the right_ , Pete’s text says. 

So Patrick rolls himself out of bed, grabs his laptop, opens his bedroom door, and peeks to the right. Pete is standing in the hallway, waving. 

Patrick steps out of his bedroom, heading down the hall to him. “Why didn’t you just come knock on my door?” 

“I wasn’t entirely sure which one was yours. Anyway, the texts were romantic.” 

“Romantic?” 

“Or something. This way.” The house really is a maze and Patrick is grateful that nobody is giving him a quiz on how to navigate it. But eventually they reach Pete’s goth bedroom again, with its partially-crushed bouquet of chrysanthemums set up on the nightstand, and, as promised, a bottle of bourbon in the reading nook by the window, in the middle of the messy piles of well-worn books and heaps of moleskines. Pete leads him over to the window seat and they settle into it. There’s a sense of midwinter rural darkness outside and just the dim glow of the lamp by the bed inside, and it’s incredibly cozy. 

Pete pours fingers of bourbon into cut-crystal glasses and hands Patrick one. 

Patrick says, “Is this how rich kids rebel against their parents?” 

Pete leans back against the opposite side of the window seat and tangles their legs together and laughs. “No. Rich kids rebel against their parents by drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon in red solo cups.” 

Patrick laughs and looks at Pete, who tips his head against the window and watches him back steadily. Pete is impossibly beautiful at all times, but he’s made for a cozy moment like this. Patrick finds his presence to be the human equivalent of a fuzzy blanket. Nice to have around, desirable to grab and pull on top of you. Patrick is aware of the way air between them thrums, a sensation against his skin like brushing a finger against a vibrating guitar string.

Patrick says softly, “I’ve got an idea for a date.”

Pete smiles. “Yeah? Are we allowed to come up with our own dates? I thought America had voted on them for us.”

“America is the worst at dating. That’s why I don’t date America.”

“Yeah, they never call the next day, they fucking suck,” agrees Pete.

Patrick says, “Do you want to write a song with me?”

Pete stills. He had been rubbing his socked foot absently against Patrick’s calf, and the soothing motion pauses. “What, now?”

Patrick holds up the laptop he brought with him. “No time like the present, right? I thought we could write a Christmas song, really knock everyone dead.”

Pete laughs a little. “What kind of Christmas song would I write? ‘Merry Christmas, I could care less.’”

“ _Don’t_ come home for Christmas,” Patrick suggests.

“You’re the last thing I want to see underneath my tree,” Pete continues.

“See, look at that, we’ve got a whole chorus already. I would have to write an emo Christmas song, I don’t know any other type of Christmas song, right?”

“Look at you,” Pete grins, “finally embracing your inner emo.”

“In exchange for you finally embracing your inner starburst,” Patrick proposes.

“I don’t know how to write a song with someone,” Pete says, like a confession.

Patrick shrugs. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Do you want the words first, or do you want to play me a song and I’ll try to fit words into it?”

Patrick considers. “It might be fun to have the words first. I’ve never composed like that before. Do you have any words?”

“Patrick.” Pete picks up the nearest moleskine, waves it around. “I am nothing but words.”

“Okay.” Patrick puts his bourbon on the windowsill and opens his laptop. “Let’s do this, then.”

***

Pete really is nothing but words, the pages of his journals are full of them, crowded with them, they seem to fly off his pen.

“They’re all totally unedited,” Pete says. “I mean, I don’t know. They’re probably all unusable.” He’s sitting in the middle of his bed, surrounded by notebooks that he’d collected from various places all over the bedroom, flipping through and discarding all of them. He looks anxious and uncertain and very young. Patrick feels like he can very clearly see the teenager Pete must have been, the one who didn’t go to prom, the one in an emo band.

Patrick says cautiously, where he’s still sitting on the window seat, “You don’t have to—”

“No, I _want_ to,” Pete interrupts, sounding frustrated at himself. “I really _want_ to, I just—I don’t know which words to give you, can you just take all of them?”

Patrick regards the piles of notebooks. “That…seems like a lot.”

Pete also looks at them. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I know, totally.”

And Patrick thinks back to their first date, not even a week ago ( _not even a week ago?_ ) and on that date Pete suggested that everyone found him a little too much. Patrick doesn’t know when he decided to commit to an internal promise that he would strive never to find Pete too much, but it manifests itself firmly in that moment, in the impulse that drives Patrick to get to his feet and cross the room to the bed.

“Can I?” he asks for permission, and when Pete nods he sits on the bed with him and looks at the sea of notebooks. “I’ll just start,” he says, and plucks one up at random. _These are your good years, don’t take my advice, you never wanted the nice boys anyway_.

“I had some really bad breakups,” Pete says.

“So did I. At least you made poetry out of yours.” Patrick reads the lines over again, and thinks of Vicky telling him that nice boys weren’t always Patrick’s specialty, and he smiles.

“What?” asks Pete, suspicious, like his words could never make anyone smile.

Patrick reads the lines out loud, then says, “You _are_ a nice boy, you know.”

“Not _that_ nice,” Pete purrs, all flirt for a moment.

Patrick says, “You know what I mean. You _are_.”

Pete drops the flirt. “Is this you insisting on the starburst inside of me again?”

“More than one daisy,” Patrick agrees.

“Yeah, no, keep reading those notebooks and get back to me on that one.”

“‘I hope you dedicate your last breath to me before you bury yourself alive,’” Patrick reads aloud.

“See? Super-starburst-y.”

Patrick chuckles. “I don’t know, it sounds like someone who loves a lot.”

Pete rolls his eyes. “Okay.”

“Who loves a lot, and that means you get hurt.” That silences Pete. He looks across at Patrick, his amber eyes intent, and Patrick wonders if Pete’s thinking of how exposed he is to hurt right at this very moment. Because Patrick has been thinking it since practically the moment he met Pete. Patrick swallows and says, “I really admire that about you.”

Pete says, trying and not quite achieving sarcasm, “That I get hurt a lot?”

“That you imagine possibilities, even though that means you might be disappointed, you still see them. You’re—You’re—Like the possibility that some guy you heard play the piano one night might be worth talking to. I’m not good at possibilities.”

“That’s not true,” Pete protests softly. “You emailed me back, didn’t you? The strange dude who made you the subject of a national advertising campaign, like, you took a chance on that possibility.”

“You make me believe in possibilities in a way I usually don’t,” Patrick says. “Meanwhile I…wrap myself in my music and tell myself I don’t need anything more than that, and then I hide myself behind a drum set because I’m too scared I’ll be laughed off the stage as a lead singer of a band.” Patrick laughs self-deprecatingly. “Jesus, what a mess I am.”

“Patrick,” Pete murmurs. “You’re not a mess.”

“No, I am. I _am_. You think I’m chasing my dreams or something but I’m really not. I’m just hiding, all the time. Because the only possibilities I ever imagine are full of failure. Failing at a relationship, failing at my music.”

“You think I don’t imagine failure?” Pete asks. “Constantly? All the time? Because I do. Look at the notebooks full of angry words. Sometimes I get so depressed at what a failure I am that I can barely get out of bed.”

“So then how do you do it?” Patrick whispers. “How do you reach out and try to grab someone again? How do you meet a guy in a piano bar and think in _possibilities_?”

“I don’t know,” Pete answers softly. “It’s just… No matter how many times I—One of them has got to come through, Patrick. I swear to God, one of them _has_ to come through, and that’s going to be worth it. I always just keep thinking that someday, good things are going to happen, and happen, and happen, and they’re going to be magnificent.”

Pete is impossibly beautiful, and Patrick is so very lost. “When you say it like that, I think I believe it,” Patrick says.

Pete tips a smile at him. “I’ve been starting to believe it lately, too.”

***

Patrick doesn’t notice when Pete falls asleep. That’s how deep in the songwriting he is. He just knows that at one point he looks up from GarageBand to find him curled up, sound asleep, breathing deep and heavy. _Oops_ , thinks Patrick, looking at him sleeping, and wonders what he should do. Well, first things first. He leans over and tugs a blanket up over Pete so he won’t be cold.

And then he brushes the back of his hand lightly over Pete’s hair. Pete scrunches his nose at the contact but doesn’t wake, instead turning more fully into the pillow he’s sleeping on.

Patrick whispers, “Sorry I’m really awful to write a song with.” And then, upon reflection, “Sorry I don’t really know how to date like a normal person. I hope I’m not doing too terribly.” Pete sleeps on. Patrick says, “You really are a nice boy. I can’t imagine you know this about yourself but you’re basically the nicest boy I have ever met, and you make me want you to be my specialty. Look at that, there’s a possibility for you. You feel like my possibility, and that the possibility of _you_ makes everything else possible, and if I fuck this up I am never, ever going to forgive myself. So. How’s that for pressure, huh? So I’ve got this request, and if you’re just pretending to sleep right now so that I’ll tell you all these things, then I figure this is my opportunity to say it.”

Patrick falls silent and watches Pete. He doesn’t look like anything other than sound asleep. There’s not a twitch or an eyelid flicker out of place. Patrick says softly, “Please never stop looking at me the way you look at me. Like I’m something amazing. Like I could stand in front of an arena and lead them in song. Like I could have _you_. If you could keep that up, I would appreciate it very much, okay?”

Pete gives no indication of having heard any of this.

Patrick adds, “Also, you have terrible taste in clothes.”

Pete doesn’t react to that, either.

Patrick takes a deep breath and kisses his cheek very gently. He murmurs, “Emo starburst,” fondly into Pete’s skin.

And then he turns back to his song.

***

Pete wakes slowly and _deliciously_ , and that’s so unusual for him, his relationship with sleep is always so fraught and complicated, he usually wakes up fretful and unrested, frowning and resentful. But he wakes now with the thought that he is perfectly comfortable, curled up, warm and toasty, and isn’t sleep _wonderful_.

He stretches luxuriously and opens his eyes, and, in a patch of bright sunlight streaming over the bed, there is Patrick, right next to him, sleeping heavily, slumped uncomfortably, half-sitting-up, his glasses askew on his nose and his laptop sliding off his lap into the scant space between him and Pete. At first Pete is surprised, and then he tries to recall the conclusion of last evening and can’t. All he can remember is Patrick sitting up next to him in bed, laptop on his lap, intently composing music while Pete watched and thought about how impossibly much he was in love with him. So he must have fallen asleep, and then Patrick also fell asleep. And that’s… That’s… Isn’t sleep _wonderful_ , Pete thinks again.

Pete rescues Patrick’s laptop and also his glasses, placing them behind him on the bed to keep them out of harm’s way, and then he inches a little bit closer to Patrick. He’s not touching him – he doesn’t want to cross whatever invisible line is shimmering between them – but he’s close enough to feel the rhythm of Patrick’s breaths. Pete closes his eyes, still floating in the feeling of safe contentment he’d woken with, which now he can put a name to: _Patrick_.

Next to him, Patrick’s breath hitches suddenly, and Pete opens his eyes to see Patrick blinking at him blearily.

“What time is it?” Patrick asks, his morning voice rough.

“I have no idea,” Pete says. “Not time to get up yet.”

“No?” Patrick’s eyes fall closed again. “’S good. Sorry, I didn’t mean to crash in your bed.”

“I am not complaining,” Pete replies firmly.

“Hmm,” says Patrick, and slides down to lay more fully, stretched out next to Pete. “I feel like we just skipped several steps, jumping straight to ‘sharing morning breath.’”

“We haven’t shared any morning breath yet,” Pete points out.

“Mm-hmm,” murmurs Patrick. His eyes are closed, and Pete suspects he’s about to fall asleep again.

So Pete whispers very softly, half-hoping Patrick doesn’t hear it but unable to stop himself from saying it, “You’re really nice to sleep with.”

Patrick hears it. Eyes still closed, his mouth curves into a rueful smile. He says, “Really? Am I? And all I did was lay here.”

Pete knows Patrick is making a joke, and that probably a normal person would giggle about this, but Pete can’t help that he says seriously, “I don’t sleep very much. So this was nice, thank you.”

Patrick opens his eyes. He looks at Pete across from him on the pillow. He opens his mouth, then closes it. Then he tries again, managing, “Pete—”

Pete doesn’t want to have an intense conversation about his messed-up head and how it keeps him up all night like an asshole. So he says instead, “Is that really why you’re not the singer in your band? Because you’re scared?” Because that has honestly been bothering him since he saw the set.

Patrick, after a moment, says, “I get stage fright.”

“You don’t get stage fright at the bar,” says Pete.

“My stage fright is irrational.”

“Yeah, brains are fucking like that, aren’t they?” Pete says, trying not to leak bitterness all over the place. “Anyway, you are the most incredible singer, and you would be an incredible front man in a band, and I just wanted to make sure to tell you that.”

“I am no one’s idea of a front man,” Patrick says.

“I want to make some kind of Odysseus joke right now,” Pete replies.

“I wear glasses.”

“That’s allowed, you know. It’s not a rule that only people with perfect vision can become rock stars.”

“People who look like _you_ become rock stars. People who look like me go behind the drum sets.”

“I tried to be a rock star. Trust me, I was not a success, because I cannot actually _sing_.”

“We’re quite the pair. Together we make one whole entire successful rock star,” Patrick notes drily.

“I guess we should stick together then,” Pete says, and really kind of means it, and hopes Patrick can see that.

“Yeah,” Patrick says softly, looking across at Pete with eyes that are incredibly bright in the morning sunshine. He says suddenly, “My dad’s a musician, too. He’s been one my whole life. I mean, of course he has, that’s how it works, music lives in your soul and it doesn’t—But he never… He loved his music more than he loved us, and it never even _gave_ him anything. He never got anywhere. He never did anything. He just…spent his whole life loving his music more, and he doesn’t have anything to show for it.” Patrick takes a deep breath and meets Pete’s eyes. They’re curled nose-to-nose, Pete under his blanket and Patrick on top of the duvet. Patrick says, “I don’t want to end up like him. I don’t want to go nowhere with my music and I’ve dedicated my whole life to—You are the first time I’ve ever thought that I also don’t want to end up _alone_. You…” Patrick seems to run out of air, starts up again in a whisper. “You make me want _everything_.” 

“Good,” Pete says in a low voice. “That’s what you deserve.”

Patrick takes a shaky breath. “How do you not see how much _you’re_ the starburst?”

Pete kisses him because he has absolutely no choice. Patrick is a lovely, gorgeous, too-good-to-be-true thing, and Pete kisses him because that kind of thing doesn’t come around very often, and how can you resist kissing a person like this? You can’t, you can’t, it’s impossible, Pete has no ability to resist.

Patrick kisses him back, and Pete sinks into the kisses, the heated back-and-forth of them, the scratch of Patrick’s stubble across his chin, the bite of Patrick’s teeth against his lips. Patrick is a good kisser, a little bit of an asshole about it in the best kind of way, and Pete really, truly can’t believe how well Patrick kisses him.

He crawls out of blanket to get on top of Patrick, to straddle him in the bed, to line up their erections through the scant layers of cotton they’re wearing and grind against him.

Patrick’s hands go to his hips, his mouth curls into a smile under Pete’s lips, tugging away from Pete’s tongue for a moment. He says, “Hey, there’s no sex in a Christmas Magic movie.”

“Is it sex if we both keep our underwear on?” Pete asks breathlessly.

Patrick laughs, just as breathless but sounding joyful, and Pete likes that, Pete kisses the laughter off his lips. Patrick mumbles, his hands caught up in Pete’s hair now, “Fucking—get us out of our underwear—I’m not—going to—in _boxers_ —Jesus Christ.”

“I can make you come in your boxers,” Pete says thickly, dragging his tongue up Patrick’s neck.

Patrick gets his hands inside Pete’s boxers and it does make Pete reconsider his plan to not wait long enough to get out of them. “I have no doubt,” Patrick says, his hand the perfect amount of tightness, and Pete drops his forehead to Patrick’s shoulder, panting. “I just—”

There’s a knock on the door. Pete freezes and looks down at Patrick, sprawled underneath him, kiss-flushed, pupils blown wide.

“If we don’t say anything,” Pete whispers, “they’ll go away.”

“Pete?” his mother voice calls, and Pete feels like a goddamn teenager, what the fuck. Patrick pulls his hand out of Pete’s boxers like he was just caught with it in the cookie jar, looking aghast. “Is Patrick in there with you?”

“No!” Pete shouts back automatically.

“It’s just that his sister is here,” says Pete’s mother.

Patrick startles and sits up, tumbling Pete off him. “My what?”

***

Pete is out-of-sorts, and who can blame him? An hour ago he had Patrick’s hand on his dick, and now he’s standing outside in the freezing cold being taught the rudimentary basics of how to drive a one-reindeer sleigh. Merry fucking Christmas. Luckily there is no camera crew documenting this event. He’s supposed to be able to instinctively know how to drive a sleigh when the whole debacle gets broadcast later.

“There’s my brother,” Maeve remarks, striding up to the tableau. “Mr. Christmas himself.”

Pete rolls his eyes and allows himself to be hugged. “Whatever. When did you get here?”

“Five minutes ago. And I immediately came looking for you. Because. Peter Lewis Kingston et cetera. Tell me what the fuck is going on in that house.”

“A lot,” Pete says, and sticks his hands in the pockets of his coat. “Are we done here?” he asks the irritable man who was giving him lessons. Granted, he wasn’t the best student, but whatever.

The man grumbles something under his breath as he leads the reindeer away.

“Not Santa’s jolliest elf,” Pete tells Maeve, once the guy is out of earshot.

“People in sulk houses shouldn’t throw jolly stones,” Maeve replies.

“Well, _that_ didn’t make sense,” says Pete.

“Pete, seriously, what is happening? That last time I talked to you you did not have a boyfriend.”

“I don’t really know if I have a boyfriend now,” Pete grouses.

“According to Mom, you have a film crew following you around to document the epic romance of your relationship.”

“They’ve turned my life into a _literal_ Christmas Magic movie,” Pete complains.

“Is this about the stock plummeting thing? Did they hire some actor to play your boyfriend? Is he hot? Wait, did they go het?”

“It’s Patrick,” Pete admits.

“Patrick…?” Maeve lifts her eyebrows.

“Hot redheaded piano player.”

Maeve’s eyes widen now. “ _Pete_. The guy you’re in love with and making out with in the viral video? He came back?” She gives him a playful shove. “Why didn’t you _tell_ me? You are the worst brother _ever_.”

“It’s been complicated.”

“Of course it has, that’s your specialty.”

Pete scowls. “Why does everyone always say that?”

“Because it’s true.”

“I want to be simple,” says Pete. “I met a nice boy, I kissed a nice boy, this should be so simple, and instead I’ve got a camera crew following me around and America has voted on our dates.”

“How did the camera crew thing happen?”

Pete sighs. “Bebe says I need a redemption arc, and she isn’t wrong. And somehow she talked Patrick into it.”

“How?”

Pete sighs again. He squints over to the house through the day’s hazy non-sunshine. Somewhere inside that house, Patrick is dealing with the fact that now his sister has abruptly joined the festivities. He says, “Patrick’s being nice to me.”

“Does Patrick like you?” Maeve asks matter-of-factly.

Pete squirms. “I don’t know, he’s nice to me.” He starts walking toward the house because honestly, a camera crew is better than Maeve.

“Yeah, but does he _liiiiiiiike_ you?” sing-songs Maeve, skipping after him.

“I—I don’t—He says he does. Whatever.”

“Whatever,” Maeve repeats fondly. “Pete. You met a nice boy who likes you. What more could you ask for on Christmas?”

“Socks,” Pete replies laconically.

“Do you like him?” Maeve asks.

“Oh,” Pete answers lightly, “I have never been so fucking in love in my entire life.”

“Pete,” Maeve says, sounding surprised, and stops him entering the house with a hand in his arm.

He sighs and turns to face her reluctantly.

“Pete,” she says, and now she sounds soft and concerned, like Pete just said he had a life-threatening illness. “I knew you liked him, but I didn’t know it was so—”

“Stop it,” he says. “I’m fine. It’s fine. It’s not a big thing. It’s, you know, it’s just, it’s whatever.”

“Does Patrick know?”

“Patrick knows more about me than he needs to know, frankly. And Patrick knows... I don’t know what Patrick knows right now. Half of our lives is for the cameras and the other half is...” Is feverish interrupted kisses. Is whispered bedtime confessions. Is _songwriting_.

“Okay,” Maeve says soothingly, and hugs him.

Pete hugs back hard this time.

“When do the cameras go away?” Maeve asks.

“Tomorrow,” Pete says into her shoulder.

“Okay. So tomorrow you should probably talk to Patrick.”

“I don’t know how to keep someone, Maeve. I don’t know how to act in a way that—”

“Pete, this guy got convinced to show up here and put his life on _camera_. I think he might want to keep _you_.”

***

Patrick is out-of-sorts, and who can blame him? An hour ago he had his hand on Pete’s dick, and now he’s sitting in a room bigger than his apartment with his mother, his father, his sister, his sister’s husband, and his sister’s two kids, and honestly, Patrick has never been in the same room as all of these people, ever. It is incredibly awkward. And Pete’s poor mom is trying to be a hostess and serving hot cocoa all around and for some reason the cameras think that this is what they should be capturing for posterity and Patrick can feel the close-ups on his horrified face when his sister says something like, “Wow, Dad, I bet Oscar wouldn’t be so wary of you if you ever came around to see him.”

And then his father says, “I’d come see him more often if you made me feel even the least bit welcome in your life.”

And then Patrick’s sister says, “When have I ever—"

Patrick says, “I think,” at the same time Pete’s mom says, “Why don’t,” and Patrick looks at her gratefully.

She finishes with, “Why don’t we play a game? I think we have cards around here somewhere. I wish I could find some toys for the kids but we don’t have little ones around anymore—"

The door to the terrace opens and closes and Pete walks in, followed by the woman who looks strikingly like him and who Patrick deduced, from Pete’s mom greeting her earlier, must be Pete’s sister. Patrick is so relieved to see Pete that he feels like he would crawl across hot coals to get to him. Luckily he doesn’t have to. Pete comes over and sits right next to him and leans over to kiss his cheek, murmuring, “How are you?”

“I would like to die now,” Patrick breathes back, pressing his nose against Pete’s cheek to cover the statement.

Pete chuckles and kisses his temple and draws back, saying under his breath, “Lucky you, I have it on good authority that this is literally the only thing I do well: charm people’s pants off.”

“Don’t charm the pants off my sister, please,” Patrick says.

Pete winks and turns to Patrick’s sister, extending his hand. “Hi. I’m Pete. Sorry I rushed off as soon as you came in, I had to learn how to drive a sleigh.”

“I’m Hannah,” Patrick’s sister says. “This is my husband Steve.”

“Cool,” says Pete, his smile wide and welcoming. “Welcome. And who are these important personages?” He sits on the floor, the better to be close to Patrick’s nephews, who look at him with cautious interest.

“Don’t worry,” someone says softly, sitting next to him. “He’s really good with kids.”

Patrick looks up at Pete’s sister, and says truthfully, “He’s really good with most people, in my experience.”

“Yeah, it is his talent. He doesn’t think it’s a big deal.”

“He’s wrong,” Patrick says immediately.

“He’s wrong a lot,” she replies, sounding amused. “I’m Maeve.” She holds out her hand.

“Patrick,” he says, shaking it. On the floor, Pete seems to have convinced his nephews to show him something on YouTube on their iPad. Hannah is directing them and smiling at whatever remark Pete is making, so Patrick thinks that’s a disaster that may have been averted. His parents and brother-in-law are still sitting stony and awkward but Patrick can’t do anything about that, and anyway, Pete’s mom seems to be running interference. Patrick says, “He takes after your mom that way?”

“Being wrong a lot?”

“No, being good with people.”

“Oh. Both of my parents, I think. Lots of socializing in this house.”

“Kind of the opposite in my house,” Patrick says, and turns from the tableau of his family to look at Maeve.

“Welcome to the Christmas Magic,” Maeve says drily. “How are you holding up?”

“It’s fine,” Patrick says. “It could be worse.”

“How?” Maeve asks curiously.

“I mean, I could be doing all this _not_ with Pete.” Patrick’s not sure he meant to be so honest, but there you have it.

And it makes Maeve smile. “Good. I think that’s how Pete feels, too. Thank you for this, you know. I think, if you would have asked Pete, he would have said that he didn’t think he knew anyone who would help him out of the mess he made. So thank you.”

“I caused him the mess in the first place,” Patrick confesses. “This is kind of the least I could do.”

“This is definitely not the least, Patrick. This is more like the most.”

“Patrick,” Pete says, bringing Patrick’s attention over to him. “Your nephew agrees with me about _Star Wars_.”

“My nephew is five,” Patrick says.

Pete laughs and his mother asks something about what the kids will eat for lunch and Pete takes advantage of the lull to shift to sit at Patrick’s feet, leaning against his leg and looking up at his sister. “Maeve, meet Patrick. Patrick, Maeve.”

“We took care of that,” Maeve says.

“Did you learn how to drive a sleigh?” Patrick asks him.

“I’m going to get us killed,” Pete says.

“Us?” Patrick says in surprise.

“Oh, they didn’t tell you? It’s part of our romantic Christmas journey, Patrick. I’m going to take you on a sleigh ride.”

“There’s no snow,” Maeve points out.

“I think they’ll CGI it in,” Pete says.

“Are there seatbelts on this sleigh?” asks Patrick, alarmed.

Pete laughs. “We’ll wear helmets, how’s that?”

“The most romantic part of our Christmas journey would be if you don’t get us killed trying to drive a sleigh,” remarks Patrick.

“So,” Hannah says loudly, “Pete.”

Pete turns from Patrick to face her, while Patrick worries about what she’s about to say.

“Thank you so much for the invitation to spend Christmas with you. When Mom said we were going to spend Christmas with Patrick’s boyfriend’s family, I was _delighted_ ,” she continues sweetly. “Patrick never introduces us to his boyfriends, he’s a very private person.”

“Yeah,” Patrick mutters, glancing at the cameras.

“Well,” Pete says heartily, “we’re so happy you could come.”

“How did the two of you meet?” She sounds genuinely interested.

Pete says slowly, “You don’t know how we met?”

“Patrick doesn’t tell me anything,” she replies.

“I just mean—" begins Pete.

“Pete came into the bar where I play,” Patrick says, because that seems simplest and he doesn’t want to get into more than that. He wants it to be just that simple, honestly, and if Hannah somehow missed the whole complicated story of how they really met, then, Patrick can just pretend it really is that simple.

“Oh, that’s right, you still play music,” Hannah says vaguely.

“He plays the _best_ music,” Pete says immediately. “I could not get him out of my head. He’s the _best_.”

“Anyway,” Patrick’s mother says, because she can’t bear to ever be talking about music for very long. “We’re very happy about this whole situation.”

“Us, too,” chimes in Pete’s mom.

“The matriarchs have spoken,” Maeve drawls. “You guys are as good as married now.”

***

There’s a corner of the house that Patrick thinks is deserted and he ducks into it to hide for just a minute, from the cameras and the awkward tension of his family interactions, and he puts his face in his hands and takes a deep cleansing breath, and when he puts his hands down instead of being all alone there is Pete’s dad sitting in a chair behind a desk.

“Oh,” Patrick realizes, and looks around himself. “This is definitely your office. Oops. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, it’s my hiding place, too,” he says kindly. “Can I do something for you?”

“No, no, I’ll just…” Patrick makes vague hand motions, like, _go back out to my reality TV life_.

“Sure I can’t get you a scotch?” he says, gesturing to the decanter on his desk. “I hear that next they’re going to film you and Pete decorating a Christmas tree together.”

“Okay,” Patrick says, “maybe just a quick drink.”

Pete’s dad quirks a smile. He has Pete’s mouth, generously amused. He says, “Have a seat,” as he pours the drink, and then hands it across to Patrick. “These are odd circumstances,” he says.

“A little,” Patrick allows, and sips his scotch. Pete’s dad does not have Pete’s eyes, and where Pete’s eyes are all warm and molten, Pete’s dad’s eyes are cold and laser-sharp and incisive, pinning Patrick in the chair. He takes a bigger sip of scotch.

“I don’t dislike you,” Pete’s dad says slowly.

Patrick has the sense this is high praise. “Thanks?” he says.

Pete’s dad chuckles. “I just mean that usually Pete brings home idiots. He has a weakness for…opportunistic strays, shall we say. You don’t strike me as being terribly opportunistic.”

“Because I’m a failure?” Patrick asks a little hotly. Maybe he’s a little sensitive about that, okay?

“Because you obviously actually care about Pete and keep hiding from the cameras,” Pete’s dad answers calmly.

Oh, thinks Patrick. “I’m still a stray, though,” he says.

Pete’s dad laughs again. “That’s okay. So is Pete.”

Patrick takes a deep breath. Maybe this is crossing a line and inappropriate but also maybe Pete has never had anyone to say this for him before. “Pete wants a lot not to be disappointing to you. I just wanted you to know how very much he wants to make you happy.”

Pete’s dad blinks, looking surprised. “Pete always makes me happy. Pete’s not disappointing.”

“That is definitely not what Pete thinks,” Patrick replies grimly.

“We just want Pete to be happy. That has always been difficult to achieve. He’s never been happy with anything we’ve ever done.”

“Maybe because they weren’t the things that were going to make him happy. Have you ever asked him what would make him happy?” asks Patrick.

“Trust me,” Pete’s father replies, “he has no idea what would make him happy.”

“I don’t actually think that’s true,” Patrick says evenly. “I just think that maybe he didn’t think you would listen to what he wanted, so there was no point in saying it.”

Pete’s father looks struck by that, like it’s never occurred to him.

In the silence that follows, Pete knocks on the door and says, “Um.”

“Oh,” his father says, a little dazedly, standing from the desk. “We were just… I was just leaving so you two can have the room. It was…nice chatting with you, Patrick.”

Pete watches his dad leave the room, and then looks at Patrick. “What does that mean? He said that funny.”

“I don’t know,” Patrick says, impatient and frustrated. “Why does it never occur to parents that what they could do is just support what their kids want? Instead of thinking that the key is that _they_ have to know what their kids wants? You know?”

Pete regards him, leaning up against the doorjamb. “Is this about you or me?”

“Both of us.”

“Well, in the case of your parents, now that I’ve gotten to know them, don’t take this the wrong way but I think they’re so caught up in their own dramas where they and only they are the protagonists and everyone else is just, like, the B storylines, that you’ve just got to go off and be your own protagonist and fuck whatever story they’re writing in their heads about you, you write your own story, you know what I mean?”

Patrick stares at him. “That’s…actually pretty spot-on.”

Pete shrugs.

“You’re so good with people,” Patrick realizes. “I mean, I knew this, but you’re _really good_ with people. You just read them well, and you know how to flatter them.”

“I’m not just flattering you,” Pete says immediately.

“I’m just saying that it’s a real talent and I don’t know if you give yourself enough credit for it. Also, your father says you make him very happy and he would like for _you_ to be happy, too.”

“Yeah, well, he could, I don’t know, ask me what would make me happy,” mutters Pete.

“Yes,” Patrick agrees. “And, if you would like me to repay your favor just now, I think you’re not enough like your parents for them to understand how to make you happy, and so you’ve just got to go off and be your own happy, and don’t feel guilty about it, or apologetic, because that gives them the impression that you’re half-hearted. Does _that_ make sense?”

“Yeah, actually,” Pete says, blinking. “It does.”

Patrick feels like maybe he accomplished something. He puts his unfinished glass of scotch on the desk and gets to his feet. “Okay. So are we off to decorate a Christmas tree?”

“Yes.”

Patrick walks over to Pete. “And are you really going to drive us in a one-horse sleigh tonight?”

“One-reindeer sleigh, and I am going to be pretty damn sexy as I do it, if I do say so myself.”

Pete looks drolly ridiculous and Patrick can’t help but smile and flirt back. “Are you going to be wearing a Santa hat?”

Pete reaches out to run a finger along Patrick’s collar, skimming his skin. “Would a Santa hat do it for you, sparky?” He looks up at Patrick through his lashes.

It’s fucking devastating and Patrick wishes a fingertip on his chest wasn’t getting him hard right before they have to go trim a tree on camera. He says thickly, “Don’t wear a Santa hat, how’m I ever going to watch Rudolph ever again?”

“Santa hat and tie,” Pete says, “that’s totally what I’m wearing for you.” And then he drops his finger and the coquettish act and says abruptly, “Are you okay? This has been a lot. I want to make sure you’re okay.”

He says it with such simple and earnest concern, clearly the real reason why he showed up here in the first place, to check up on Patrick. “I’m okay,” Patrick says, but it’s as he says it that he realizes that he’s not. He’s absolutely emotionally exhausted. When he takes a breath, it’s shaky. He was handling this all much better when it was just _Pete’s_ family dynamics in play. 

“You would not believe how much you can just let me handle this,” Pete says seriously. “I’m good with people, remember? It’s not effort for me. Whatever you need from me, I’m here for you.”

“Wow, you’re really good at this,” Patrick says, trying to joke. “I finally understand why people like to have significant others.”

Pete smiles, looking pleased. “Me, too, actually.” And then he moves in for a hug.

Patrick wasn’t quite expecting it, but he droops into it, his head against Pete’s shoulder, and he closes his eyes, and for a second he just _is_.

There’s the sound of jingle bells and a _ho ho ho!_ from somewhere on the other side of the house.

“Is that Santa Claus?” Patrick murmurs.

“Honestly?” Pete replies. “Probably.”

***

It’s Santa Claus.

Patrick’s older nephew is delighted. Patrick’s younger nephew is screaming in terror that they let this monster into the house.

“Oh, dear,” Pete’s mom says, watching Patrick’s sister try to calm the kid down. “I thought hiring a Santa to come would be a _good_ thing.”

Pete looks at his watch. Patrick’s sister has been here all of three hours. “When did you have time to organize this?”

“It takes no effort to get a Santa Claus.” His mother shrugs.

“Last-minute on Christmas Eve?” Pete is dubious.

“Alright, I may have used the name ‘Wentz,’” his mother admits.

“Uh-huh,” says Pete sardonically.

“By the way, everyone at the Santa rental agency is really rooting for you and Patrick, they think he’s such a nice young man.”

“Oh, my God,” says Pete.

“ _I_ think he’s a nice young man,” she continues.

And now Pete’s going to get a lecture about how he should try not to fuck this one up the way he usually fucks up everything about his life. “Can we not talk about this right now?” Pete begs.

“I know this is a tough day for you—”

“This isn’t a tough day for me—” Pete denies.

“—you hate Christmas—”

“I don’t ‘hate’ Christmas—”

“—I’ve never seen you smile so much on Christmas Eve.”

“That’s because we’re not surrounded by two hundred of our closest friends and investors yet,” Pete rejoins.

“That’s not true, you’ve just never liked Christmas. Blame it on the parties if you want, but you’ve _never_ liked Christmas. You’ve never enjoyed it, you’ve always just sat in a corner and pouted, no matter what we did to try to appease you.”

“Hey, it looks like maybe I need to break things up here,” Maeve says sunnily, stepping in between them.

“There’s nothing to break up,” Pete says sullenly. “When the fuck can we decorate this goddamn Christmas tree and get that over with?”

***

The Christmas tree they picked out together looks tiny in the great room, barely the height of the fireplace hearth it’s sitting next to. Someone’s strung it all around with classy white lights. Bebe is setting out collections of ornaments for them to put on the tree, all perfectly matched, complementary colors of the season.

Pete looks at them and thinks he’s going to have a panic attack.

“Okay,” Bebe’s saying, “all you have to do is just, you know, put a few ornaments on the tree, maybe smile at each other a little bit. Just…be you.” She smiles at them brightly. “Be you decorating a tree. Happy fun times, right?”

 _Happy fun times_ , Pete thinks. He’s always such a goddamn failure when it comes to happy fun times. He always ruins all the happy fun times. Everyone always wants so little from him – just a smile for the camera, Pete! it’s a tree! It’s fun! – and Pete just can never deliver it, he tries and tries but he’s never what people want, not really, he--

“You okay?” Patrick asks him.

He is possibly going to vomit on their tree, he thinks. He’s cold and clammy and he knows a panic attack when it comes on, it’s like standing on the sand of the ocean when all the water’s been sucked away, knowing the tsunami is rushing up to you and what good would it do you to run?

Pete closes his eyes and says wetly, “Just one of these years I would like to go to bed and just sleep through fucking Christmas, instead of having to be a goddamn Christmas show pony. Fa la la la la la fucking la.” 

Patrick’s voice is so sharp that Pete feels it lash through the air. “Stop recording,” he says harshly, clearly to the camera crew, and then, maybe to Bebe, “He’s not doing this.”

“Is he going to faint?” Bebe sounds alarmed.

“Nope, he just needs air,” Patrick’s voice says, sounding very far away, and then Patrick’s hand is on his arm, searingly hot, and then Patrick is propelling him somewhere, and then they’re outside, and it’s very cold, and Patrick is saying, “Hey, what—” and Pete keeps his eyes squeezed shut, turns blindly into him, says desperately, “I don’t _want_ to hate Christmas.”

“Hey.” Patrick’s voice is soft and sure. His arms come up and enfold Pete against him. “It’s okay. Whatever happened, it’s okay.”

“I didn’t go to my prom because I was too depressed,” Pete babbles. “It was a bad episode and I couldn’t—I couldn’t conceive of the energy it would take to get out of bed and get dressed and pretend to be _happy_ for everyone, like, that’s what takes the energy. You’re so tired you just want to sleep for a million years but no one can leave you the fuck alone, everyone’s got to be like, ‘Smile for the cameras, Pete!’ and that takes so much energy. The idea of going to the prom and smiling for all the cameras felt _unbearable_. I couldn’t go.”

Patrick is silent for a second in the wake of this outburst, just breathing, and Pete hiccups for breath in his arms. Then he says, “Don’t worry, you didn’t miss much. I’ve heard from lots of people that proms are overrated.”

Pete swallows around the lump in his throat. “Everyone in the universe thinks you should be happy at Christmas. Everyone in this family, like, it’s practically our reason for existing. Especially when you’re a kid, everyone expects you to be happy, there’s so much pressure to be happy. I hear the word ‘Christmas’ and I think about sitting on the couch wanting to cry and instead having to smile and say ‘thank you’ for the gifts. Like, that’s what an asshole I am, Patrick. I would get showered with gifts and I hated them, I hated having to pretend, like, God, it’s so goddamn much fucking energy, Christmas, and it is _relentless_ , it never goes away, it just keeps coming at you, over and over, you cannot avoid fucking _Christmas_. Every year Christmas comes and it doesn’t make me feel as happy as it makes everyone else and I just have to pretend and pretend and I fucking _dread_ it. Even the years when I feel okay, I’m worried I don’t feel okay _enough_ , that I just really don’t feel what everyone else around me seems to be feeling. That’s why I was in a bar drinking alone on Christmas Eve, Patrick. Because every year I freak myself out that I don’t feel like smiling enough to satisfy everyone, and I’m just so _tired_.” Pete stays with his face pressed tight against Patrick, because as long as he stays just like this, the rest of the Christmas-drenched world seems a little farther away. “So there you have it,” he says wearily. “Tell me again what a goddamn starburst I am.”

“Pete, you’re not a starburst because you smile all the time. That’s not what I mean when I tell you that. And I don’t want you to pretend with me. Okay? I don’t want you to feel like you need to spend the energy pretending. If you don’t feel like smiling right now, then you don’t have to fucking smile. I promise. I will never force you to smile when you don’t feel like it.” 

“But, Patrick, you _deserve_ the smiles,” Pete tells him achingly. “You deserve every single smile in the universe, not a guy who can be handed the world on a silver platter and still feel dead inside.”

Patrick presses his lips to Pete’s head. “I will never make you smile when you don’t feel like it,” but I will always remind you that I’ll be right there with you, that I’ll never leave you, and that you will want to smile again, and that you are _never_ going to be too much. Okay? I one-hundred-percent promise you.”

That sounds like a heady and impossible promise, but Pete accepts it greedily.

“Fuck Christmas,” Patrick says feelingly. “We never have to celebrate Christmas ever again. We never have to put all that pressure on one random day. We’ll celebrate Christmas any day we feel like it, any day we’re smiling, _that’s_ Christmas.”

“You can’t just change when Christmas happens,” Pete says.

“If it would make you feel better, yes, I fucking can,” Patrick replies.

Pete’s never really had someone say anything like that to him before. Pete’s never had someone listen to a torrent of his too-much-ness and say, _Cool, we’ll do it your way, whatever you need_. The tight tense dread that had curled up in him when his mother reminded him that usually he’s a disappointing depressed mess on Christmas, that expectation that that cold darkness will rush back onto him, retreats a little, Patrick’s starburst beating it back.

“No pressure,” Patrick whispers into his hair. “No pressure.” Like a mantra.

And Pete feels better and better. _No pressure_. He just is who he is, and there is no pressure to that.

“Thank you,” Pete whispers.

“Dude, fucking anytime,” Patrick says, and it’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to Pete.

***

“We’re not trimming this tree,” Patrick tells Bebe, and that’s the end of that.

She says, “Okay,” warily, like she’s not sure where the boundaries are anymore. She looks at Pete, who looks exhausted and fragile and small, and Patrick wants to tuck him into bed and feed him chicken soup. Bebe says cautiously, “What about the sleigh ride?”

“I’m fine,” Pete says. “I’ll do the sleigh ride.”

Patrick looks at him. “You don’t have to—”

“I want to do the sleigh ride,” Pete says firmly. “I just don’t want to have to trim the tree.”

So they’re doing the sleigh ride.

Bebe has procured for Patrick a suit and tie, because Christmas Eve at the Wentzes is that kind of event. He eyes it and wonders what the rest of his family is going to wear, and then decides not to care. He’s got enough to worry about without their drama. _Make yourself your own protagonist_ , he reminds himself, and in his movie, he’s not going to worry about his opportunistic family.

Vicky texts as he’s getting dressed. _Merry xmas! Still over the moon for your boy?????_ There’s a heart-eyes emoji again, and then an eggplant, and then another eggplant. Vicky is not subtle.

Patrick picks up his phone and considers what to write back. They have just a few more hours of this nonsense, and then he and Pete can just…be. Be whatever they are going to be to each other. They can figure it out, away from the cameras, without all the pressure, when it’s no longer supposed to be the world’s most perfect Christmas.

Patrick can’t wait.

He writes back, _tired of being on camera, but theres only a few more hours_ and _merry xmas_.

He gets a _you can do it!_ gif in response of a mouse trying to eat a strawberry.

There’s a knock on the door, and Patrick glances at himself in the mirror. He’s respectable except for his tie not being tied, so he goes to answer the door.

It’s Bebe, who says, “Oh, hey. You look good.”

“I look like I’m playing dress-up,” Patrick grimaces. “I don’t wear suits.”

“Hey, at least you’ve still got a hat on, right?” Bebe starts absently tying his tie for him. “The perfect Christmas Magic movie boyfriend version of you wears suits. Listen, should I stop this? I can stop this.”

And could he and Patrick just run away, right now, and spend Christmas Eve cocooned in an empty motel room somewhere? “What, like, cancel Christmas?” Patrick asks.

“No, I can’t cancel Christmas. Patrick, this company’s entire _raison d’etre_ is Christmas. We’ve got to have Christmas. But it doesn’t have to happen on camera.”

Patrick considers. “But Pete’s got to be here?”

Bebe nods and steps back, examining her handiwork on his tie.

She’s right, of course. They’d undo all the good they’d done by disappearing at this point. “If we’ve got to stay, then we might as well do it for the cameras.”

She looks at Patrick worriedly. “Is Pete okay? I don’t know him very well and I feel like all I’ve done is fucked up his life.”

 _Pete hates Christmas because he has to pretend, and your solution was to make him pretend even more_ , Patrick thinks, but that’s unfair; he went along with the scheme, too, after all. And he didn’t think it would get as confusing as it’s gotten, the real and the pretend all mixed up, no wonder Pete’s wound so tight. Patrick totally gets it. 

He says, “There’s only a few more hours to go, it’s going to be okay.” Maybe this is wishful thinking on his part, who knows.

Bebe, after a second, nods, totally willing to let Patrick tells her what she wants to hear.

Patrick goes downstairs, anxious. He should talk to Pete and make sure Pete’s okay with all of this. But Pete said he wanted to do the sleigh ride, so yeah, Pete must be okay, right?

Pete’s mother is in the foyer and hands him a peanut butter blossom, smilingly pleased with herself.

Patrick’s mother is in the foyer and fusses over his suit. “ _Look_ at you. I never thought your music would get you anywhere, and look where it’s gotten you. I was wrong. I’m very proud of you, Patrick.”

Apparently she seems to think that’s going to make him feel pleased. It doesn’t. Patrick says sourly, “I’d rather you were proud of me for me and not who I’m fucking.”

His mother makes a soft shocked noise. “ _Patrick_.”

“Okay, here we go,” Pete interrupts with perfect timing, and smiles sunnily at Patrick’s mother and whisks Patrick away.

“Thank you,” Patrick whispers meaningfully.

“Anytime,” Pete replies.

They’re being driven to the top of the driveway, which is ridiculous, but that’s how long the driveway is. So they sit in the back of the car together and Patrick says, “We are the two prickliest people to be chosen to demonstrate Christmas magic.”

“Ho ho ho,” Pete says. And then, “Remember, you’re just her B story. Be your own protagonist.”

“And you’re supposed to grab your own happiness,” Patrick reminds in return. “So tell me: do you want to grab it and just keep driving right now and not do the rest of this?”

Pete considers for a moment. “I realize we’re being shuttled up to a one-reindeer sleigh I’m supposed to escort us to the detested Christmas Eve gala in, but…I actually _do_ feel happy right now. Like, not about all this nonsense, but I’m happy I’m here with you. I really am. For whatever reason, it doesn’t feel like effort and I don’t have to pretend. I was getting ready for this and I realized I was weirdly looking forward to doing all of this with you.” Pete reaches for Patrick’s hand, squeezes it. “I don’t know. This may change at any time because I’m an asshole like that, but for this moment, for the time being, I’m really happy.”

Patrick doesn’t know what to say except, “Me, too.”

Pete smiles. “Was that, like, the cheesiest Christmas Magic movie thing to say? I’m embarrassed.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” says Patrick, and gives in to his desire to kiss Pete, just light and sweet. He murmurs against his lips, “Also, that’s not why you’re an asshole.”

Pete laughs, as the car pulls to a stop by their sleigh. “I just want to tell you that you look very handsome. Lucky me, I got the best Christmas Magic movie hero of them all.”

Patrick feels himself blush. He grumbles, “Stop being ridiculous and drive this stupid sleigh.”

Pete laughs. “I’m not sure that’s going to be conducive to my _not_ being ridiculous.” He gets out of the car.

So Patrick follows suit.

And it’s not a sleigh, of course, because there is no snow on the ground. It’s a wagon. Rickety and rundown. It smells very strongly of manure, which Patrick suspects was its previous job. A hasty bright red blanket has been tossed over the contents in the back, and, actually, Patrick suspects that there really is manure back there.

Pete is clambering up into the driver’s seat of the wagon.

Patrick says, “Did they really stick us in a wagon full of shit?”

Pete grins at him. “Totally appropriate for our Christmas Magic movie, don’t you think?” Pete picks up the Santa hat laying on the seat next to him and plops it on his head, beaming like he’s a Chippendale dancer and it’s a bowtie.

“That’s not hot,” Patrick tells him.

Pete laughs. “Get up here,” he says, and holds out his hand to help pull Patrick up.

Bebe comes from out of nowhere, with a fuzzy fleece blanket that she tucks around Patrick’s lap. She’s saying, “Again, thank you so much for all of this, I’m so sorry, it’s just a little while longer.”

“It’s fine,” Pete says, “Bebe, honestly, I don’t think I’ve been appropriately grateful. I think you saved my career for me with all of this, and thank you for that.”

Bebe pauses in adjusting the blanket and looks up at Pete. She says, “Well, to be fair, I was the reason your career was almost destroyed in the first place.”

“You’re also the reason Patrick is here,” Pete rejoins sunnily, “so you’re coming out ahead so far. And I can totally be Pete Wentz for the cameras for a few more hours, I’m an expert at playing that version of Pete Wentz.”

Bebe pauses, then says, “Well. Thank you.” She clears her thoat. “We, uh, want people to think this is a very romantic sleigh ride.” Bebe pauses as Pete and Patrick both look at her. “Wagon ride,” she corrects herself.

“We are literally transporting shit at this moment,” Pete points out.

“Yeah, I’m depending on your acting skills. Just keep looking lovesick at each other, it’ll work. We’re only taking wide shots, so we won’t be able to hear you.”

“We don’t look lovesick at each other,” Patrick says.

“Yes, we do,” says Pete, and then, “Watch this,” and he slaps the reins.

Nothing happens.

“The reindeer is supposed to move,” Pete explains.

“Yeah, I got the general idea,” says Patrick.

“We’ll get the reindeer started,” Bebe says, and gestures someone over. The reindeer-handler, Patrick supposes.

The reindeer-handler slaps the reindeer’s ass and the reindeer jerks forward, taking the wagon with it, and Patrick grabs for the wooden bench he’s sitting on to keep from tumbling backward into the manure.

“Oh, fuck,” he says, hanging on for dear life. “Bebe, if I die during this, tell Vicky I really will haunt her like I always promised.” He has to shout the last, because the wagon is moving so quickly, Bebe is far behind them.

“You’ll be fine!” Bebe shouts back to him.

“We’ll be fine,” Pete says confidently. He looks very relaxed, barely holding the reins, while the reindeer stomps down the driveway, the jingle bells on its harness keeping time.

“Something tells me you are well-acquainted with promising people that madcap ideas will turn out fine.”

“Madcap,” Pete echoes. “I like that word, use it again.”

“Madcap, noun, illustrated with a photograph of us sitting in this wagon behind a reindeer.”

Pete laughs. The reindeer snorts and keeps plodding down the driveway.

Patrick considers what a good job Pete is doing driving this one-reindeer wagon.

Pete says, “I am doing a pretty good job driving this one-reindeer wagon, wouldn’t you say?” He sounds very smug.

“Nope,” Patrick replies.

Pete laughs again. He nudges their shoulders together. He says in a low voice, “I am a spoiled rotten bastard who can’t get out of bed some mornings no matter how awesome and lucky I have been in life.”

“That is not what depression is,” Patrick responds, just as softly.

“I just want to say again – because for me it can never be said enough -- that you really have made me incredibly happy. On _Christmas_. And if my head fucks me over tomorrow and I forget how you make me feel, I’m hoping _you_ won’t forget. That I’m super-happy you’re here, Patrick. Like, that’s what I meant to say before when I said I was happy. All of that.”

Pete shrugs like it’s all nothing, and Patrick murmurs, “Hey, can you take your eyes off the road while you’re driving this wagon thing?”

“It’s a driveway,” Pete says, “and the reindeer’s been trained, so yes, I’m not really doing anything impressive.” He looks at Patrick, meets his eyes.

And Patrick is aware of the act of bravery that is, for Pete to say everything he’s said, to be as vulnerable as he’s been, and to meet it head-on. “You are the bravest person I’ve ever met,” Patrick says suddenly. That wasn’t what he was planning to say but it feels apt and undeniable.

Pete smiles the small and self-deprecating version of his smile. “Because I’m letting a reindeer decide where this wagon should go?”

“No,” Patrick answers gravely. “Not for that. I want you to teach me how to be half as brave as you.”

Pete is silent for a moment, studying Patrick’s face. And then he says, “Well, I’ve got news for you, sparky. You’re about to attend the Wentz Christmas Eve Gala. Gather all of your courage.”

***

The Wentz Christmas Eve Gala contains a glittering array of the fanciest assemblage of people Patrick has ever witnessed outside of a film.

“It’s like a freakin’ _Gossip Girl_ party,” Hannah comments.

Or a television show, Patrick supposes.

“Except it’s kind of a boring party,” Hannah continues. “Do you think they’ll play the Macarena later? Spice things up?”

There’s a small coterie of instruments in the corner crooning very traditional Christmas songs.

“Do you think they would know what the Macarena was if you went and requested it?” says Hannah. “Aren’t you the golden boyfriend? Go and request the Macarena, see what happens.”

“Look,” says Patrick, “the one redeeming feature of this party is that it doesn’t have the Macarena.”

“Ah, I notice you didn’t dispute the golden boyfriend thing.”

Patrick sighs. “I’m not the golden boyfriend.” He is far from it. He is an awkward curiosity at this party. Everyone is furtively or not-so-furtively staring at him. He and Pete started the evening together, and Pete shone so brilliantly, so charming and winning to everyone he spoke to, that Patrick felt he was just weighing him down, and went in search of more of the Christmas punch that was being served, and promptly got cornered by Hannah.

“For what it’s worth, I like him. Although it’s not worth anything because you don’t care what the rest of us think.”

“I care what you think,” Patrick says half-heartedly.

“So what was the reason you didn’t tell any of us about your hot, rich boyfriend, then?”

“Look at me. Why do you really think I didn’t tell you about him? How long do you really think this is going to last?” He knows what Pete thinks about how he feels, but, come on, Patrick is trying to cling to realistic expectations here.

“You’re staying with his parents for Christmas, Patrick. I’d say it’s pretty serious.”

“I’d say it’s at least fifty percent marketing gimmick,” Patrick corrects.

“What?” Hannah asks blankly.

“Seriously, do you live under a rock?” Patrick demands.

“I’ve got two kids five and under and a full-time job, Patrick. A _real_ full-time job.”

“Right,” Patrick agrees. “Unlike me. That is definitely my cue to go and find Pete, I saw Mom and Dad bickering over near the bar area, you can totally go and join in the debate over how unsuitable music is as a career.”

“Patrick, don’t be like that,” starts Hannah.

“Merry Christmas, Han,” Patrick says, with a little salute, and ducks into the crowd.

The problem is that he has no idea where Pete is. He’s not in the general area where Patrick left him, so Patrick steps back, out of the fray, scanning the crowd for Pete. This is when it would be useful if either one of them were taller, he thinks, frustrated.

Patrick texts Vicky: _Help, I’m lost in a crowd of fancy people._

Vicky texts back, _Where’s the hot kajillionaire you’re dating?_

Then the hot kajillionaire shows up. Pete stands in front of him in his tuxedo with his ridiculous Santa hat still on his head and looks very hot indeed and says, “Um.”

“Hi,” Patrick says, relieved. “I couldn’t find you. Here’s your punch.”

Pete takes the punch automatically, saying, “Did you purposely stand under the mistletoe?”

Patrick looks up. “What the fuck, is that actually mistletoe? Who the fuck has actual goddamn mistletoe, Pete, I’ve never seen that in my fucking life!”

“It’s a Christmas Magic party, Patrick, of course we have mistletoe. Now I have to kiss you and literally every single person at this party is waiting for it.”

“Don’t use tongue,” Patrick warns.

“Patrick,” Pete says, softly fond, and then he leans over and kisses the very corner of Patrick’s mouth, more his cheek than anything else, a sweet brush of a kiss across Patrick’s skin. He lingers there just a second, pressing his nose against Patrick’s cheek briefly, and that’s weirdly what undoes Patrick, whose breath catches in his throat.

 _This fucking CEO guy_ , Patrick thinks, stunned and dizzy. This fucking CEO guy kissing his cheek under the mistletoe in front of hundreds of eyes and a camera crew -- for some reason Patrick is completely overwhelmed by this. Patrick fists a hand into Pete’s velvet lapel and tugs his lips against his. No tongue, but a mouth-to-mouth kiss. Patrick feels like he needed that.

“Mistletoe isn’t satisfied by a kiss on the cheek,” Patrick murmurs into the scant space between him and Pete, because neither of them has really moved away.

“Oh, now you know all the rules about mistletoe?” Pete jokes.

“These are my own made-up mistletoe rules,” Patrick says.

“I approve. And because I’m the Christmas CEO, that makes them official rules.” Pete grins, quicksilver, followed by an equally flashing kiss, and then he takes Patrick’s free hand and tugs him directly into the crowd of onlookers. “This way,” he throws over his shoulder, and then leads them this way and that, zig-zagging through, with a determined sense of purpose. People call out to them and Pete acknowledges with brief pleasantries, and then abruptly they come through the other side of the crowd, and then immediately outside.

The cold air feels like a slap in the face, waking Patrick up. “Oh,” he can’t help but exhale, a little dizzy from how quickly everything just happened.

“I’m an expert at getting through a crowd in order to make my exit,” Pete explains. “I have perfected it over many years of Christmas Eve Galas.”

“And this is where you go?” Patrick looks around the dark terrace.

Pete shrugs.

“Nobody looks for you here?”

“Maeve does. Nobody else really cares.”

“I can’t believe that’s true,” Patrick points out. “You’re a tremendous hit, I’ve been watching you charm everybody all evening. I know you don’t think so but you’re incredibly good at what you do.”

“So are you,” Pete rejoins.

“Touche,” Patrick allows.

“And I’m a hit because you’re next to me,” Pete says, coquettish, crowding into Patrick’s space.

“Well,” Patrick says, as he gives himself the early Christmas present of an ample handful of Pete, “I guess that makes two of us.”

“Two of us?”

“My mother is very proud of me because you’re next to me.”

Pete huffs impatiently. “The one thing I want for Christmas this year is for everybody to see how amazing you are.”

And that is so expectedly Pete, it’s everything Patrick’s heard out of Pete all along, but still, he says stunningly lovely things like that like they’re _nothing_ , and Patrick is always left wishing he had half of Pete’s words to repay the favor with.

Instead of Patrick coming up with something incredibly sweet to say to Pete, someone clears their throat, stepping out onto the terrace with them. Patrick looks up to see Pete’s dad.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he says, “but I believe it’s time for a toast.” He smiles at Pete. “Your favorite time of the evening, I know.”

Pete makes a face at Patrick and says, “I’ve got to be merry and cheerful. You should go stand under the mistletoe so I can get another kiss when I’m done. Give me something to look forward to.” He grins, bright-eyed and adoring, before stepping away and into the house.

Pete’s dad says, “I’m only going to steal him for a second. I _have_ been trying to pay attention to what makes him happy.” Pete’s dad sends him a secretive smile, so like the way his son smiles sometimes, followed up by a little wink, and then he also goes inside.

The answer Pete’s dad has arrived at is clear: Patrick. Patrick is what makes Pete happy.

Patrick wants to text Vicky. _Help, I’m so in love_. But Vicky would just say something like _tell me something I don’t know._

Patrick goes inside, where he can see Pete making his way to the small stage occupied by the band. He’s being pulled in for little conversations the whole way there, tugged into handshakes and hugs, and Pete has quick smiles for all of them, a few little words, and Patrick thinks how Pete really is so good at this and doesn’t even realize it, thinks the opposite of himself. If Pete would just trust himself a little more, Patrick thinks Pete might be able to relax more.

Pete clambers onto the stage and greets the musicians and then makes a motion with his hands for quiet, the room growing obediently hushed all around him. He commands attention. If Patrick commanded attention the way Pete commanded attention, he wouldn’t hesitate to front his own band, Patrick thinks drily.

Pete says into the microphone, “It’s that time of year again. Time for my annual toast.” And then he falls silent. For long enough that there’s a little murmur in the crowd and Patrick wonders if something is wrong. Then Pete starts talking again. “Usually I write the toast out, because if I don’t write things out first, I end up just pointlessly rambling, and I never get to the point, and I feel like that’s a metaphor for my entire life so far: I’ve felt like I couldn’t find the point. And I tried, trust me, I tried, really hard, even though I know that it looked like most of the time I wasn’t doing much of anything at all. But I was always trying to figure out…how to be like everyone else. How to be _happy_. How to find the thing that makes you smile at Christmas. Because, you see, for most of my life I’ve never been able to smile at Christmas. Christmas was a grand, magnificent lie, when you had to pretend to get everything you wanted under the tree, when the thing you wanted was…”

Pete pauses, looks out over the crowd, finds Patrick’s eyes. “What am I even rambling about? What I’m trying to say is that someone told me recently that…that Christmas isn’t about this one day. Christmas should be every day. We should give each other the amount of love and affection we carry around on Christmas just, like, all the time.”

Pete takes a deep breath, keeps going. “Someone said to me recently…that I didn’t have to pretend. That I could just be me. No pressure. Just me. And I wouldn’t be too much. And he said that and I thought…that’s what Christmas should be. I kept asking for scooters and videogames and records, and that’s not what Christmas should be about.” Pete pauses. “Okay, maybe it should be a little bit about the records.”

There’s a little ripple of laughter over the crowd. Patrick doesn’t laugh because he’s too busy holding Pete’s gaze, dry-mouthed.

“But no,” Pete continues, sounding firm and sure, “Christmas should be… It should be the people you love, gathering around, exchanging presents that mean _I love you just as you are_. _No pressure. Just as you are_. _You won’t be too much_. And if that’s what Christmas is, then it should definitely be Christmas every day. We shouldn’t be selling one day a year. We should be selling this _every day_. I feel like… I feel like I could be saying this for the cameras but I’m actually not, I just… I think I finally get what Christmas is supposed to be. It’s finding a space where you can be emo, with someone who still believes you’re a starburst.” Pete smiles over the heads of all the people attending this fancy party, smiles right at Patrick, just for him and him alone. When he leans close to the microphone and speaks, it sounds intimate and impossibly sweet. “The true meaning of Christmas was an emo starburst all along.”

The crowd looks between them, not quite getting what Pete’s saying and also obviously aware that it’s not really for them.

“Merry Christmas,” Pete says, lifting his glass, “to all of you, and to Patrick, who’s so much more than he realizes.” 

“Merry Christmas,” the crowd repeats, and Patrick stands frozen on the edge of the crowd. Patrick thinks of Pete, doing all of this, making it through all of this, year after year, feeling alone and unseen and still being brave enough to _just keep doing it_. Pete, who seems to think he’s something amazing and remarkable when _Pete_ the amazing and remarkable one. But Pete thinks Patrick is so much more, Pete thinks Patrick should be his own fucking protagonist, Pete…Pete thinks a lot of extraordinary things about Patrick and suddenly, abruptly, like a strike of Christmas magic, Patrick wants to deserve all of them. 

The way Pete looks at Patrick makes Patrick feel like he can do anything. So maybe he should start trying.

Patrick starts pushing through the crowd.

***

Pete meets Patrick shoving his way toward him and says, “That was supposed to be eloquent, that was supposed to be me saying—”

Patrick takes Pete’s face in his hands and kisses him hard. There’s tongue involved. It’s very good and very inappropriate.

“Oh, wow,” Pete says faintly, when Patrick moves back.

“I want to be the person you see,” Patrick says. “I want to be the person worthy of all that wild devotion. That’s who I want to be. I want to be _that person_.” Patrick is out-of-breath, like he’d just run a mile.

“You are that person,” Pete assures him, perplexed. “I promise, you—”

“No,” Patrick cuts Pete off, shaking his head, and then he climbs onto the stage. “Can I play a song?” he asks the piano player.

Pete is dimly aware of the cameras rolling in the background. He says, “Patrick, you don’t have to—”

“This is for you,” Patrick tells him, sitting at the piano.

“Right, that’s what I’m saying, you don’t have to—”

“I wrote this for you, and I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, and this is what I’m going to do with it.” Patrick cracks his knuckles and clears his throat and plays a couple of chords on the piano.

Pete wants to protest again but he also kind of wants to hear whatever this is going to be. He’s a little selfish, sue him. The crowd is buzzing with anticipation, they’ve never witnessed such an interesting Wentz Christmas Eve gala before.

Patrick says into the microphone, “Imagine that this starts with jingle bells, it’s supposed to have jingle bells.”

The crowd hushes, and Patrick sings. And it’s a fucking _emo Christmas song_. Patrick has written him an emo Christmas song, _using his words_. “These are your good years, don’t take my advice, you never wanted the nice boys, anyway,” sings Patrick, and Pete stares, open-mouthed, listening to Patrick’s incredible voice making his words sound _beautiful_. “All I want this year’s for you to dedicate your last breath to me before you bury yourself alive,” sings Patrick, and Pete’s eyes feel suspiciously wet, he might be fucking crying, okay? “Don’t come home for Christmas, you’re the last thing I wanna see underneath the tree,” sings Patrick, and looks directly at Pete when he sings, “Merry Christmas, I could care less.”

Honestly, it’s the most beautiful thing Pete has ever heard.

And it’s _his_.

When Patrick is finished, he stands and bows a little awkwardly, and while the rest of the room is applauding, Pete is busy burying himself in Patrick’s arms. “Oh, my God, that was the most romantic thing that has ever happened,” he says damply into the curve of Patrick’s neck.

“Did you like it?” Patrick asks hesitantly, like there’s any fucking chance Pete didn’t _adore_ it.

“I have a confession to make,” Pete says, and lifts his head up. “You really, really, one-hundred-percent just made me believe in Christmas magic.”

Patrick gives a relieved laugh.

“No, seriously,” Pete insists, “who’s going to get a better gift than that? No one, ever, not in any Christmas past, present, or future.”

“It wasn’t that good,” Patrick says, blushing beautifully.

“It was _fantastic_ ,” Pete assures him.

And then he doesn’t get to say anything else because everyone else is descending upon them. Maeve says, “That was the most perfect song to play for my brother, that was him to a T,” and Pete’s mother says, “It sounded just like when Pete was a teenager,” and Patrick’s father says, “When did you write that? What a pretty little tune,” and Patrick’s mother says, “I didn’t know you could sing like that,” and Patrick looks a little overwhelmed.

And Pete thinks that he just got everything he wanted for Christmas.

***

It’s late on Christmas Eve, and the last of the guests have gone. The camera crew has gone. Bebe has gone, with a tight hug and suspiciously misty eyes.

Pete is standing in the empty foyer with his parents and Maeve. All around them is the detritus of the party and the steadily glowing Christmas decorations. Somewhere in the house Patrick’s family has already settled into sleep, and in the other room, a few tinkling piano notes sound. Patrick, waiting for him.

Pete stands in the middle of Wentzes and, for the first time in a long time, doesn’t feel like running and hiding.

His mother hugs him suddenly, tight and fierce, and says, “We only ever wanted for you to be happy. Didn’t you know that? I’m sorry you didn’t know that. Everything we did was because we were hoping to make you happy.”

“Patrick says maybe we should start listening to you about what would make you happy,” his father adds.

“He’s like a wise little leprechaun,” says Maeve.

“With a beautiful voice,” adds his mother thickly, still hugging him tightly.

“He does have a beautiful voice,” Pete chokes out. “Also I need to breathe.”

“Merry Christmas, Pete,” his mother says, and kisses his cheek.

“No, seriously,” his father says somberly, “Merry Christmas.” The words land heavily, like they actually _mean_ something, like they’re not just what Wentzes say because it made them a kajillion dollars.

Maeve says, “He gave you an emo song for Christmas, like, _Pete_.”

“No, _I know_ ,” Pete agrees, nodding frantically.

“Merry Christmas,” Maeve says, and hugs him, less tightly than his mother had but no less warmly. “I love you very much.”

“I love you, too,” Pete says into her shoulder. “And thank you.”

“For what?”

“I promised you I wouldn’t let him go if I ran into him again. And that’s the whole reason I emailed him. And…look.”

“And this is why you should always listen to me, always, without question,” Maeve informs him.

“Go to bed,” Pete says, and watches his family go up the stairs before heading back into the great room.

Patrick is still at the piano. His playing has formed the shape of a song. _O Holy Night_. Pete wishes he was singing along, because he bets Patrick sings the most gorgeous rendition of this song.

Pete brushes his hand along the Christmas tree they chose, standing still undecorated except for the lights. He breaks off a little sprig of pine that he tucks into Patrick’s hat as he reaches him, a festive dose of green with tinsel clinging stubbornly to it.

Patrick stops playing and says, “Hi.”

“Don’t stop on my account, that was beautiful.” Pete sits next to him on the piano bench.

“Not a song I play much at the bar,” Patrick says. “But a really pretty song.”

“Patrick,” Pete says, looking at him, and then falters, because he honestly doesn’t know what else to say. Patrick is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Patrick is… Patrick _is_ magic. There is no other way to put it. “You are magic,” he says.

Patrick shakes his head a little. “I’m just a kid from Chicago who’s not successful enough to live alone and has a terrible roommate named Jake who never washes any dishes,” he replies in a low voice. He lifts a hand up to brush through Pete’s hair, and Pete could swear it was trembling. “Who fell for a hot kajillionaire.”

Pete smiles. “Hey,” he murmurs, and leans forward to mouth along Patrick’s jawline.

“Hmm?” Patrick says, tipping his head for him.

“All I want for Christmas is your dick,” he whispers.

“Oh, my _God_ ,” says Patrick, laughing, “you are the _worst_.”

“Christmas magic, yo,” Pete says, nipping at Patrick’s Adam’s apple. Patrick’s hands are fully in his hair now, and he’s shaking with laughter against him, and Pete has literally never been so happy, it’s _astonishing_.

“Well, it’s a good thing that’s all you want, because that’s all I’ve got for you,” Patrick rejoins.

“Don’t say that’s all you’ve got, it feels like a lot,” Pete purrs at him, hands in appropriate places. “But also, shut up, you got me a gorgeous song for Christmas. I’m the one who got you nothing.”

“You got me you,” Patrick says, and then sucks in a breath, like he didn’t mean to really say that.

And that was all for Pete, Pete thinks. That was no cheesy line for any cameras. Pete, near enough to kiss Patrick, breathes against him for a moment, trying to regain his equilibrium. Finally he says, “O Holy Night, huh? I can think of a couple of relevant holes.”

“Do you want to get laid tonight?” Patrick asks.

“Yes,” says Pete.

“Stop talking,” says Patrick.

Pete smiles and kisses him. And kisses him. And kisses him. On a Christmas Eve that’s turning into a Christmas morning, surrounded by the fifteen perfectly decorated Christmas tree and one small, imperfect one shoved in a corner, all of them glowing Christmas blessings all over them. Pete is kissed and kissed, not because of mistletoe, but because he’s Pete, and Patrick is Patrick, and on any day, not just Christmas, they would have ended up here. Here and here and here, Pete thinks, leading Patrick through the darkened house to his room, pausing for kisses in stairwells threaded with garland, in little alcoves with creepy Santa statues, in forgotten corners with fake snow heaped up, against doors with scratchy, shedding wreaths.

In his room, on his bed, he undresses slowly, like it’s something new and rare and should take time, like there’s no objective beyond the hushed moment they’re in.

Patrick says, sounding punched, “Look at you. You’ve got…tattoos.”

Pete looks down at his chest. “Did you not know that?”

“If I’d known that I don’t think I would have let you keep your shirt on so much,” Patrick says, and rolls Pete onto his back so he can stretch over him and kiss his smile. “What happened to your Santa hat?” he mumbles. “You lost it.”

“Dude, it’s our first time, can we save the complicated kinks for later?” Pete asks, pulling Patrick’s tie off of him.

“A Santa hat is complicated?” says Patrick, and then his eyelashes flutter when Pete lightly wraps the tie around his wrist.

“Hmm,” Pete remarks, “definitely doing that later, I knew you had a thing for ties.” He tosses the tie aside and commences to working on the buttons of Patrick’s shirt.

“You should know,” Patrick says, “I don’t have any tattoos.”

“Don’t care,” Pete says.

“I don’t have, like, a rock star body.”

Pete just lifts his eyebrows at Patrick. “What are you talking about? You’re a rock star, and this is your body, so…QED.”

“QED?”

“I’m very fancy.”

“I’m not a rock star.”

“Merry Christmas, I could care less,” Pete sings to him.

“Don’t sing anymore,” Patrick says solemnly.

“You’re right, I should find something else to do with my mouth,” Pete agrees, and shoves to get Patrick onto his back.

Patrick looks up at him, spiky-haired, glasses askew, obscene mouth swollen with kissing, and Pete cannot imagine what Patrick sees in the mirror that isn’t _perfection_. “Hey, emo boy,” Pete says to him, walking a fingertip teasingly over his erection, “can we do this every Christmas?”

“Let’s do it this Christmas first,” Patrick suggests hoarsely.

Pete grins, and then Pete goes down like the champ he is. Patrick’s hands are tight in Pete’s hair, the perfect amount of pressure, and Patrick makes beautiful noises in the shape of Pete’s name, and Patrick’s hips twitch with aborted little thrusts he’s trying to hold back, and Pete is dizzy mostly with love and a little with lack of oxygen, oops, he has to pull back to gulp a breath and Patrick reaches for him, clumsy, and pulls him up and over, into a deep, filthy kiss. Patrick’s hands have guitar callouses that rub over Pete’s back as he shapes him against him, fitting them together, lining them up for friction. Pete was already breathless and Patrick isn’t helping but he fucking knows what he’s doing, his rhythm is flawless, Pete is only fucking drummers from now on.

“Fuck, Patrick,” he gasps, digging his fingers into Patrick’s skin for the grounding of it, for the one sure thing that this is _Patrick_.

“Uh-huh,” Patrick says, catching their mouths together in a kiss. “That’s basically—the idea—”

“I am never letting go of you,” Pete says, desperate and so, so close.

“You had better fucking mean that,” Patrick growls, and Pete comes.

***

Patrick wakes with a start, like the world tilted underneath him and tossed him unceremoniously off it. He sits up, disoriented, and realizes he’s alone in Pete’s bed, tangled up in rumpled sheets. He squints into the room around him. It’s oddly bright, a metallic sheen over the crowded contents. And Pete is sitting in the window seat, wrapped in a blanket from the bed, staring out the window.

“What are you doing?” Patrick asks. His voice sounds rough, and he feels…sticky.

“It’s snowing,” Pete answers, without looking away from the window. “It is fucking _snowing_ , Patrick. On Christmas Eve.”

That explains the silver brightness in the room. Patrick drags himself out of bed and over to the window seat, peering out to see the snow. It’s a delicate icing on all of the pine trees, a frozen confection swept along the dead lawn. The moonlight bouncing off of it makes the sky look lit up, catches the flakes floating softly past the window. “It must be Christmas morning by now,” Patrick remarks. “Look at that, a pure white Christmas.”

“I love snow, Patrick,” Pete says suddenly, and Patrick’s surprised that he sounds like he’s on the verge of tears. “I _love_ it. It’s so pretty, and soft, and bright, and I love it, and it’s snowing on Christmas, and that’s when the movie ends, isn’t it?”

“No, the movie ends before the sex,” Patrick says drily. Then he reaches out to smooth a hand along Pete’s riotous hair. “What’s the matter, love?” he asks softly.

Pete makes a sound like a sob, and then he turns wild eyes on Patrick. “I _mean_ this, Patrick. I’ve meant every single second of everything between us. I am in love with you. I’m _so_ in love with you. You are not a starburst, Patrick, you’re a freaking _supernova_ in my life, you’ve lit it up in ways I could never have imagined, you’ve changed _everything_ , you’ve made me want to be _me_ , and I never want to be me! And I cannot go back to a life without you, I’m sorry, I can’t. So if there’s any little part of you that was acting for the cameras, that was doing this out of pity, that felt bad for the lonely kajillionaire loser, then—”

“I love you, too,” Patrick cuts him off.

Pete swallows thickly, staring at him, breathing hard. “What?”

“Nothing was ever for the cameras. Not a single moment of it. I’m in love with you, too. I was in love with you that first night when you were talking about how creepy the snowman is in ‘Winter Wonderland,’ like, I didn’t stand a fucking chance, Pete. _You_ are the magic one. Not Christmas magic. Just Pete Wentz magic. I have never really cared if I ever found someone to go through life with and now I care very passionately that I get to go through life with you, I don’t want to do it with anyone else.”

“Really?” Pete sounds like he can’t dare to hope that this is true.

“Yes, really. Have I done such a terrible job communicating that to you? I’m sorry. Let me be much clearer.” He puts a finger under Pete’s chin, tips it to make sure Pete holds his gaze. “Pete Wentz. We’re waking up together every morning. Okay? You’re going to give me your beautiful words and I’m going to try to find music deserving of them and we will be the best versions of ourselves. I will make you smile, and on the days when you don’t feel like smiling, I will love you even harder until you find that you want to smile again. And none of it, no matter which side, emo or starburst – none of it will ever be too much. Is this all very clear to you?”

Pete nods, speechless.

“And I’m really hoping you feel the same way, because, really, Pete, I never, ever, ever do this, I’m supposed to be married to my music, I didn’t expect to ever want to make room in my life for anyone but my music. So, like…yeah.” Whatever, Patrick’s not the poet.

“Patrick,” Pete says, his voice trembling but sure, “I’m yours until the earth starts to crumble and the heavens roll away.”

It’s Patrick’s turn to be speechless. He manages a nod because he can’t manage anything else.

Pete says, his voice laden with what sounds like hope, “Do you want to run away with me? Like, let’s just get in the car and drive and wherever we end up, it’ll be just the two of us, together, wherever. Let’s just…be us now. Do you want to?”

Patrick nods again. He wants to very much. It sounds perfect.

Pete flings himself into Patrick’s arms, buries his face in Patrick’s neck. After a moment he says, “Does this mean I can get in on the lifetime free carwashes you got after your prom gig?”

Patrick hugs him tight, and then responds in kind. “You should know: I think CEOs are a drain on society and their salaries should all be redistributed.”

Pete laughs.

***

_Next Christmas…and next Christmas…and next Christmas_

It’s not Christmas.

But they don’t celebrate Christmas on Christmas. They celebrate Christmas at random times when Pete’s in the mood for it. Because why the fuck not. _Free yourself from the tyranny of the calendar_ , Pete tells Tristan. Patrick says, _Don’t raise our daughter to be terrible at dates, though, please_.

So yeah, whatever, it’s September, and the windows are open to the early fall crispness drifting through, and Patrick is sound asleep on his back with Zaylee passed out on his chest, because Zaylee is getting a tooth and they were up half the night with her and that was _after_ setting up Santa gifts under an out-of-season Christmas tree because Pete makes his family celebrate Christmas in September sometimes.

Pete is watching Patrick sleep, because Pete still doesn’t sleep much and because Pete has never gotten out of the habit of finding comfort from Patrick still being there next to him. It doesn’t matter how many years Patrick spends right next to him, Pete still likes to reach out and make sure. He does it on stage when they perform together, drifting over to be close while Patrick sings his words. He does it when he’s in CEO persona, in the office, texting Patrick nonsense to make sure he’ll text back. He does it when he’s so happy he could burst with it, setting new personal records for happiness all the time, grabbing Patrick to make sure he’s getting all the happy, too. And he does it when everything is too much and he doesn’t want to get out of bed, but he has to, because babies need their dads, and so what he does is he reaches for Patrick and Patrick says, _Come on, no pressure, no pretending, just sit on the couch with us_ , and it’s something.

The door flies open suddenly and Tristan barrels onto the bed with all the energy of a six-year-old who’s been promised presents. “Santa came!” she exclaims, not even a little bit quiet.

Patrick stirs and squints at her, but luckily Zaylee is still dead to the world.

“Shh,” Pete says, trying to wrestle her into stillness. “Your sister had a rough night last night.”

“What _time_ is it?” Patrick complains, rubbing at his eyes. “Why do all of these children take after you and never sleep?”

“I sleep, Daddy,” Tristan protests, “but _Santa_ came.”

Patrick manages to smile at her through his sleepy grumble. “Yeah, I know. A special September trip just for Tristan Stump-Wentz, that’s what he said.”

Tristan’s jaw drops. “Did you _talk_ to him? Hang on, do you know Santa?” Tristan turns her suspicious gaze on Pete. “Do _you_ know Santa?”

“Never met the dude,” Pete tells her, and ruffles her copper-colored hair. Patrick was the one who wanted to have children, and when he proposed it, Pete had thought, _Well, at least they’ll have Patrick around to be the good parent_ , and now Pete thinks, a zillion times a day, _Thank fucking God Patrick wanted to have kids_. Pete would never have done this on his own, but he cannot imagine a life without these children.

“Don’t listen to a word he says, your father is the king of Christmas,” Patrick says around a yawn. “How do you think we get the special out-of-season Santa visits? The Wentzes have pull.”

“Uh-huh,” Tristan agrees, unimpressed. “ _Please_ can we go open the gifts now?”

“Yes,” Patrick says, even though his eyes are closed. “We can totally go open the gifts.”

“Do you know what Santa said?” Pete tells Tristan.

“I thought you didn’t know Santa!” Tristan reminds him.

“He said we should make Daddy some pancakes before we open any gifts.”

“Oh, my God, _really_?” Tristan is outraged. “Did he actually say that!” Santa is clearly a traitor to the cause of little girls opening presents.

“Let me see the baby,” Pete says, sliding her carefully off of Patrick’s chest and nestling her in Pete’s arms. Her little head lolls against Pete’s chest, her mouth working once like she’s sucking a phantom bottle in her sleep. Pete smiles fondly and kisses her forehead. “I’m going to put Z down in the living room with us so she doesn’t miss all the fun if she wakes up,” he tells Patrick, as he gets out of bed. “And then, for a Christmas present, I’m going to let you sleep all day.”

“Oh, wow, have I told you lately how hot you are?” Patrick asks.

Pete laughs and says, “Two days ago, after the last show.” He leans down to kiss Patrick lightly, and then adds, “By the way, thank you for just putting up with me being weird when I want Christmas in September.”

“Pete,” Patrick says softly, “Christmas in September is you being a starburst, you know.”

Pete smiles and says, “Thank you, emo boy,” then turns to Tristan, who’s bouncing at the door. “Okay, here we go.”

“Pete,” Patrick says from the bed.

Pete glances back at him. He’s made enough progress that he’s propped himself up on his elbows. Pete has confidence he’s awake enough that he won’t fall asleep before opening the presents.

Patrick says, “Seriously. Merry Christmas.”

Pete winks as he says, “I could care less.”

_The end._


End file.
